EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON A DYNAMIC ASYMMETRICAL TYPHOON INITIALIZATION SCHEME BASED ON 4D-VAR

Axisymmetric bogus vortexes at sea level are usually used in the traditional bogus data assimilation （BDA） scheme. In the traditional scheme, the vortex could not accurately describe the specific characteristics of a typhoon, and the evolving real typhoon is forced to unreasonably adapt to this changeless vortex. For this reason, an asymmetrical typhoon bogus method with information blended from the analysis and the observation is put forward in this paper, in which the impact of the Subtropical High is also taken into consideration. With the fifth-generation Penn State/NCAR Mesoscale Model （MM5） and its adjoint model, a four-dimensional variational data assimilation （4D-Var） technique is employed to build a dynamic asymmetrical BDA scheme to assimilate different asymmetrical bogus vortexes at different time. The track and intensity of six surmner typhoons much influenced by the Subtropical High are simulated and the results are compared. It is shown that the improvement in track simulation in the new scheme is more significant than that in the traditional scheme. Moreover, the periods for which the track cannot be simulated well by the traditional scheme can be improved with the new scheme. The results also reveal that although the simulated typhoon intensity in the new scheme is generally weaker than that in the traditional scheme, this trend enables the new scheme to simulate, in the later period, closer-to-observation intensity than the traditional scheme. However, despite the fact that the observed intensity has been largely weakened, the simulated intensity at later periods of the BDA schemes is still very intensive, resulting in overly development of the typhoon during the simulation. The limitation to the simulation effect of the BDA scheme due to this condition needs to be further studied.

Asymmetric Distribution of Convection in Tropical Cyclones over the Western North Pacific Ocean

Forecasts of the intensity and quantitative precipitation of tropical cyclones（TCs） are generally inaccurate, because the strength and structure of a TC show a complicated spatiotemporal pattern and are affected by various factors. Among these, asymmetric convection plays an important role. This study investigates the asymmetric distribution of convection in TCs over the western North Pacific during the period 2005–2012, based on data obtained from the Feng Yun 2（FY2）geostationary satellite. The asymmetric distributions of the incidence, intensity and morphology of convections are analyzed.Results show that the PDFs of the convection occurrence curve to the azimuth are sinusoidal. The rear-left quadrant relative to TC motion shows the highest occurrence rate of convection, while the front-right quadrant has the lowest. In terms of intensity, weak convections are favored in the front-left of a TC at large distances, whereas strong convections are more likely to appear to the rear-right of a TC within a 300 km range. More than 70% of all MCSs examined here are elongated systems, and meso-β enlongated convective systems（MβECSs） are the most dominant type observed in the outer region of a TC. Smaller MCSs tend to be more concentrated near the center of a TC. While semi-circular MCSs [MβCCSs, MCCs（mesoscale convective complexes）] show a high incidence rate to the rear of a TC, elongated MCSs [MβECSs, PECSs（persistent elongated convective systems）] are more likely to appear in the rear-right quadrant of a TC within a range of 400 km.