P29  A Year-Long Tropical Cyclone Simulation with a High- Resolution Tropical-Channel Regional Climate Model

Hashimoto, Atsushi, Hiromaru Hirakuchi, Naoto Kihara, Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI), Japan

To predict tropical cyclone (TC) activities due to global warming, we evaluated the TC applicability of a tropical-channel regional climate model (WRF-ARW) to present climate. The horizontal resolution of the model domain is about 20 km around the equator; the domain spans 60¡S - 60¡N in latitude and has periodic boundary conditions in the east-west direction. For the northern and southern boundary conditions, forcing data is obtained from ECMWF ERA-Interim Reanalysis (T106).

To evaluate the TC activates predicted by the model, a year-long simulation for 2004 was conducted. First, we compared the model precipitation profiles with satellite data (TRMM 3B43), and showed that the model predicted the perturbation of precipitation over tropical regions well. Second, a TC tracking method was developed, and was applied to evaluate the TC activities by the model over North-western Pacific Ocean. The result showed that TC genesis areas and moving paths were well predicted, but the model overestimated the frequency of TC genesis compared with JMA's RSMC Best Track Data.

Thus, we concluded that a tropical-channel regional climate model can be applied to forecasting of TC activities.