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.