200 - Typhoon Committee

TCAR
CHAPTER 1 - TYPHOON COMMITTEE ACTIVITIES 2007
2007
In Hong Kong
1. Progress in Member’s Regional
Cooperation and Selected Strategic
Plan Goals and Objectives
a. Hardware and/or Software Progress
Nil.
b. Implications to Operational Progress
Nil.
c. Interaction with users, other Members,
and/or other components
The WMO RA II Pilot Project on the Provision of City-
Specific Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) Products
to Developing Countries via the Internet, approved by
the Thirteenth Session of the RA II in 2004, was in good
progress. As of 30 September 2007, 18 RA II Members,
of which 4 are Typhoon Committee Members, had
participated in the project. Currently, three NWP centres
from Japan, Republic of Korea and Hong Kong, China
had been providing forecast products for a total of 160
cities, including 33 cities of the 4 Typhoon Committee
Members. Besides graphical format, forecast products in
text format are also available to facilitate post-processing
by participants.
Based on the findings of a joint research project between
HKO and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) on the
utilization and verification of JMA’s Ensemble Prediction
System (EPS) tropical cyclone track data, a number of
forecasting tools were developed and put into operational
trials in 2007, including: (i) EPS-based strike probability
maps fine-tuned using the latest tropical cyclone fixes
(Figure 2); and (ii) ensemble mean of JMA EPS tropical
cyclone intensity forecasts calibrated using an artificial
neural network (Figure 3).
Figure 2 Left panel – the strike probability map of Typhoon Cimaron (0619) derived from JMA EPS data (initial time: 12
UTC, 31 October 2006). Right panel – the same map fine-tuned with the latest fixes. The most probable movement
of Cimaron stands out more clearly on the fine-tuned map. The black lines with circles and dots denote the track of
Cimaron.
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