Improvement in Track and Intensity Prediction of Indian Seas Tropical Cyclones with Vortex Assimilation - Monitoring and Prediction of Tropical Cyclones in the Indian Ocean and Climate Change - page 214

Improvement in Track and Intensity
Prediction of Indian Seas Tropical
Cyclones with Vortex Assimilation
Sujata Pattanayak*, U.C. Mohanty and S.G. Gopalakrishnan 1
Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Hauz Khas, New Delhi - 110016, India
1 Hurricane Research Division, NOAA, AOML, 4301
Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149, USA
*e-mail: [e-mail]
1. Introduction
Tropical cyclone is one of the most hazardous weather events over data sparse
warm tropical ocean. It is the most deadly weather system that causes destructive
winds, heavy rainfall, high storm surges and coastal inundation, usually resulting
in serious property damage and loss of life in costal belts of India and hence
strong impact on the socio-economic conditions of the countries surrounding
the Bay of Bengal, especially India, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The Bay of
Bengal contributes about 5% of the global annual total number of tropical
storms (Mohanty, 1994). Moreover, the Bay of Bengal storms are exceptionally
devastating, especially when they cross the land (De Angelis, 1976). So the
Bay of Bengal tropical cyclone disaster is the costliest and deadliest natural
hazard in the Indian sub-continent. The Arabian Sea contributes about 2% of
the global annual tropical storms. Therefore, reasonably accurate prediction of
these storms has great importance to avoid the loss of valuable lives.
In recent few decades considerable improvements in the field of weather
prediction has been achieved by numerical models. The high-resolution, non-
hydrostatic meso-scale models such as the Mesoscale Model version 5 (MM5)
of Penn State University (PSU) and the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR, USA) (Dudhia, 1993), ETA model of the National Center
for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), USA (Black, 1994), Advanced Regional
Prediction System (ARPS) of the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms
(CAPS) of the University of Oklahoma, USA (Xue et al., 1995, 2000, 2001),
Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) modelling system which includes