65th IHC Booklet/Program (pdf - 4.9MB) - Office of the Federal ...

Validation of Coupled Hurricane Atmosphere – Ocean Model (HyHWRF)
Hyun-Sook Kim, D. Iredell, Y. Kwon, L. Liu, Q. Liu, C. Lozano, J. O’Connor, J. Sims, V.
Tallapragada, B. Tuleya, Z. Zhan
(hyun.sook.kim@noaa.gov)
NOAA/NCEP/EMC
Under a goal toward the next generation of operational HWRF (Hurricane Weather
Research Forecasting) Model, a collaboration effort has been made for the past years between
the Marine Modeling and Analysis Branch and HWRF teams to build a framework of state-ofthe-art
hurricane prediction model. HyHWRF includes air-sea interactive processes explicitly by
coupling the atmospheric hurricane model HWRF to the ocean model HYCOM. In addition to
the necessity of adopting physics-driven ocean model to provide a better realization of mesoscale
sea surface temperature, for example, a motivation of the effort is to utilize unique leverage
that is offered by our organization NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction). The
hurricane HYCOM is nested to eddy-resolving, Atlantic basin model, RTOFS (Real-Time Ocean
Forecast System). NCEP runs RTOFS daily in real-time, using data assimilation including
remote-sensing, in-situ and moored measurements, and generates ocean products such as sea
surface temperature and sub-ocean properties. This infrastructure provides tremendous efficiency
to coupled system in running in real-time, owing to streamline supply of initial and boundary
conditions.
Since the HyHWRF system has reached to a maturity in 2008, hundreds of the Atlantic
tropical cyclone (TC) predictions have been performed. Also have been conducted in parallel to
operational HWRF real-time forecast and operational implementation test each year. The results
exhibit a comparable or better forecast skill to operational HWRF. This poster documents
validation of ocean simulations. Sea surface temperature, upper ocean structure as well as ocean
cooling are evaluated against available data including AXBT (Airborne eXpendable Bathy
Thermograph), AVHRR and AMSR-E remote-sensing data.
Poster Session – Page 16