EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES WITH AN OPERATIONAL NUMERICAL MODEL FOR PREDICTION OF TYPHOON TRACKS OVER THE SOUTH CHINA SEA REGION

Abstract:

Experiments for short range forecasting of typhoon tracks over the South China Sea Region were carried out using limited-area numerical model recently developed by the authors.Due to the shortage of sounding data over the sea, typhoon circulations are usually obtained incompletely from objective analysis, or with significant deviation of the centre from reality.Therefore a set of schemes for typhoon initialization are proposed here to construct a bogus typhoon with the circulation being consistent with the physical processes included in the limited-area model.Based on the schemes bogus data over the model grids are created and analysed together with conventional observational data.Then the normal model initialization scheme is issued to further modulate the model typhoon with the numeriCal modeel.Some experiments of sensitivity in various aspects are conducted for further improvement of typhoon track predictions.The experimental results for a number of typhoon landing in southern China in 1993 and 1994 shows that the limited-area model is capable of predicting typhoon tracks in the southern China region.