THE HURRICANE RAINBAND AND INTENSITY CHANGE EXPERIMENT: Observations and Modeling of Hurricanes Katrina, Ophelia, and Rita

摘要

Over the last few decades, the forecasts of tropical cyclone tracks have improved significantly, largely as a result of improvement of large-scale numerical forecast models and satellite observations, whereas relatively little progress has been made in forecasts of hurricane intensity. (Official error trends are documented online at www.nhc.noaa. gov/verification.) Difficulties are that the maximum potential intensity (MPI) of tropical cyclones, estimated from the sea surface temperature and upper-tropospheric temperature and humidity (Emanuel 1988; Evans 1993; DeMaria and Kaplan 1994; Holland 1997), is rarely reached, and the storm intensity frequently undergoes strong fluctuations from one day to the next (e.g., Hurricane Opal 1995; see Lawrence et al. 1998; Krishnamurti et al. 1998; Bosart et al. 2000).