FY2011 Annual Report of Data Assimilation and Predictability Studies for Improving Tropical Cyclone Intensity Forecasts""

Abstract

This project aims to understand and improve the forecast of Tropical Cyclone (TC) lifecycle evolution and intensity, focusing on both large-scale environment and mesoscale phenomena in the TC system, which are major components responsible for intensity change. Two major challenges in TC intensity forecasting are the general lack of observations in the vicinity of TCs and the adaptive representation of the forecast error covariance. This project attempts to address both challenges for improving TC intensity forecasting.