An Evaluation of Tropical Cyclone Genesis Forecast over the Western North Pacific and the South China Sea from the CMA-TRAMS

Tropical cyclone(TC) genesis forecasting is essential for daily operational practices during the typhoon season.The updated version of the Tropical Regional Atmosphere Model for the South China Sea(CMA-TRAMS) offers forecasters reliable numerical weather prediction(NWP) products with improved configurations and fine resolution. While traditional evaluation of typhoon forecasts has focused on track and intensity, the increasing accuracy of TC genesis forecasts calls for more comprehensive evaluation methods to assess the reliability of these predictions. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the CMA-TRAMS for cyclogenesis forecasts over the western North Pacific and South China Sea. Based on previous research and typhoon observation data over five years, a set of localized, objective criteria has been proposed. The analysis results indicate that the CMA-TRAMS demonstrated superiority in cyclogenesis forecasts, predicting 6 out of 22 TCs with a forecast lead time of up to 144 h. Additionally, over 80% of the total could be predicted 72 h in advance. The model also showed an average TC genesis position error of 218.3 km, comparable to the track errors of operational models according to the annual evaluation. The study also briefly investigated the forecast of Noul(2011). The forecast field of the CMA-TRAMS depicted thermal and dynamical conditions that could trigger typhoon genesis, consistent with the analysis field. The 96-hour forecast field of the CMA-TRAMS displayed a relatively organized threedimensional structure of the typhoon. These results can enhance understanding of the mechanism behind typhoon genesis,fine-tune model configurations and dynamical frameworks, and provide reliable forecasts for forecasters.

Preliminary Model Study for Forecasting a Hot Weather Process in Guangdong Province Using CMA-TRAMS

In this paper, the CMA-TRAMS tropical high-resolution system was used to forecast a typical hot weather process in Guangdong, China with different horizontal resolutions and surface coverage. The results of resolutions of 0.02° and 0.06° were presented with the same surface coverage of the GlobeLand30 V2020, companies with the results of resolution 0.02° with the USGS global surface coverage. The results showed that, on the overall assessment the 2 km model performed better in forecasting 2 m temperature, while the 6 km model was more accurate in predicting 10 m wind speed. In the evaluation of representative stations, the 2 km model performed better in forecasting 2 m temperature and 2 m relative humidity at the coastal stations, and the 2 km model was also better in forecasting 2 m pressure at the representative stations. However, the 6 km model performed better in forecasting 10 m wind speed at the representative stations. Furthermore, the 2 km model, owing to its higher horizontal resolution, presented a more detailed stratification of various meteorological field maps, allowing for a more pronounced simulation of local meteorological element variations. And the use of the surface coverage data of the GlobeLand30 V2020 improved the forecasting of 2 m temperature, and 10 m wind speed compared to the USGS surface coverage data.

A CASE STUDY OF NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF SEA FOG ON THE SOUTHERN CHINA COAST

This study uses numerical simulations to examine a case of sea fog that was observed from 20 to 22 March2011 on the southern China coast. The observation dataset includes observatory data, cloud-top temperature from MODIS, GPS sonde, and data from the Integrated Observation Platform for Marine Meteorology(IOPMM). The simulations are based on the Weather Research and Forecasting(WRF) model with four distinct parameter settings.Both the observations and simulations focus on the characteristics of the fog extent, boundary layer structure, and meteorological elements near the air-sea interface. Our main results are as follows:(1) The extent of mesoscale sea fog can be well simulated when the sea surface temperature has at least 0.5 ×0.5 horizontal resolution.(2) To accurately model the vertical structure of the sea fog, particularly the surface-based inversion, vertical levels must be added in the boundary layer.(3) When these model conditions are met, the simulations faithfully reproduce the measured downward shortwave radiation, downward longwave radiation, and surface sensible heat flux during the sea fog period.

A STUDY ON THE APPLICATION OF FY-2E CLOUD DRIFT WIND HEIGHT REASSIGNMENT IN NUMERICAL FORECAST OF TYPHOON CHANTHU(1003) TRACK

In this paper, we first analyzed cloud drift wind(CDW) data distribution in the vertical direction, and then reassigned the height of every CDW in the research domain in terms of background information, and finally, conducted contrast numerical experiments of assimilating the CDW data before and after reassignment to examine the impacts on the forecast of the track of Typhoon Chanthu(1003) from 00:00(Coordinated Universal Time) 21 July to 00:00 UTC23 July, 2010. The analysis results of the CDW data indicate that the number of CDWs is mainly distributed in the midand upper-troposphere above 500 h Pa, with the maximum number at about 300 h Pa. The height reassigning method mentioned in this work may update the height effectively, and the CDW data are distributed reasonably and no obvious contradiction occurs in the horizontal direction after height reassignment. After assimilating the height-reassigned CDW data, especially the water vapor CDW data, the initial wind field around Typhoon Chanthu(1003) became more reasonable, and then the steering current leading the typhoon to move to the correct location became stronger. As a result, the numerical track predictions are improved.

OBSERVATIONAL STUDY ON THE PRE-TROPICAL CYCLONE SQUALL LINE OF 8 AUGUST 2007 OVER THE COAST OF SOUTH CHINA

A squall line in front of the tropical cyclone Pabuk occurred in the west of the Pearl River Delta to Zhanjiang on August 8th, 2007 when the storm approached South China. The development, structure and environmental conditions for this squall line were investigated in this study, with particular attention paid to the possible connection of this squall line with Pabuk. The observational data employed in this study are from soundings, Doppler weather radars and wind profile radars. The following six major conclusions are drawn by our observational analyses.(1) This squall line developed gradually from individual convective cells, and land breeze may be responsible for the onset of the squall line.(2) The path and intensity of the squall line were modulated by the environmental conditions. The squall line propagated along the coastline, and it was stronger on the landing side of the coastline compared with the surrounding in-land regions and oceanic regions.(3) The typical characteristics of tropical squall lines were seen in this squall line,including the cold-pool intensity, vertical structure and the wake flow stratiform precipitation at its developing and mature phases.(4) The environmental conditions of this squall line resemble those of tropical squall lines in terms of deep moist air and low convection condensation level. They also resemble mid-latitude squall lines in terms of the convective instable energy and vertical wind shear in the lower troposphere.(5) Two roles were played by the strong wind around Pabuk. On the one hand, it made the atmosphere more unstable via suppressed shallow convection and increased solar radiation. On the other hand, it enhanced the land-sea thermal contrast and therefore strengthened the sea breeze and the resultant water vapor transport. The sinking temperature inversion prevented the occurrence of low-layer weak convection and accumulated convection instability energy for the development of the strong convection.

Move a Tropical Cyclone with 4D-Var and Vortex Dynamical Initialization in WRF Model

Previous studies showed that 4 D-Var technique used for data assimilation could be modified for weather control. This study demonstrates the ability of 4 D-Var to influence the future path of a tropical cyclone by calculating perturbations in WRF simulation. Given the background error covariance matrix, the initial field is improved by the vortex dynamic initialization technique. Our results show that 4 D-Var can be applied to control the trajectory of simulated tropical cyclones by producing "optimal" perturbations. In the numerical simulation experiment of Typhoon Mitag in 2019, after this kind of weather control similar to data assimilation, the tropical cyclone moved obviously,and the damaging wind over the coastline weakened. The prediction results after the initial field modified by 4 D-Var have a great change, and the position of the tropical cyclone moved about 0.5° southeastward after assimilation,which misses the southeast coast of China. Moreover, the damaging wind is also weakened. Since the 4 D-Var is premised on the assumption that the model is perfect and does not consider the model error, then the research plan to consider model error and introduce new methods is discussed in the paper.

Improved Tropical Cyclone Forecasts with Increased Vertical Resolution in the TRAMS Model

The numerical simulation of typhoons has been found to be very sensitive to the vertical resolution of the model.During the updating of the TRAMS model from version 1.0 to 3.0,the horizontal resolution has been increased from 36 km to 9 km,while the vertical layer number only increased from 55 to 65 layers.The lack of high vertical resolution limits the performance of the TRAMS model in typhoon forecasting to a certain extent.In order to study the potential improvement of typhoon forecasting by increasing the vertical resolution,this paper increases the vertical resolution of the TRAMS model from 65 to 125 layers for the first time for a comparative simulation test.The results of the case study with Typhoon Hato(2017)show that the model with high vertical resolution can significantly enhance the warm structure caused by water vapor flux convergence and vertical transport,thus accurately simulating the rapid strengthening process of the typhoon.Meanwhile,the model with 125-layer vertical resolution can simulate the asymmetric structural characteristics of the wind field,which are closer to the observations and can help to reduce the bias in typhoon track forecasting.The improvement of vertical resolution is also trialed by using the batch test results of several landfalling typhoons in 2016-2017.The experimental results show that the typhoon forecast of the model becomes consistent with the observations only when the number of vertical layers of the model increases to about 125 layers,which in turn causes a large computational burden.In the next step,we will try to solve the computational burden problem caused by ultra-high vertical resolution with the top boundary nesting technique,and realize the application of high vertical resolution in the actual operation of the TRAMS model.

INVERSION OF TEMPERATURE FROM AMSU-A AND ITS APPLICATION ON WARM-CORE OF TROPICAL DEPRESSION OVER THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

The linear regression and horizontally stepwise correction are conducted on the observational data from AMSU-A L1 B of NOAA polar orbit satellite to invert a 40-layers(from 1,000 h Pa to 0.1 h Pa) dataset of atmospheric temperature with a horizontal resolution of 0.5°×0.5° after the correction of satellite antenna pattern and limb adjustment. Case study shows that the inversion data of temperature can reveal the detail structure of warm core in tropical cyclone. We choose two categories of tropical depressions(TDs) over the South China Sea, including the non-developing TDs and developing TDs. Both of them are developed downward from the middle and upper level to the lower level. Comparison between the evolutions of warm core in the two categories of TDs indicates that the warm core is developed downward from the middle and upper troposphere to the sea surface in all the downward-developing TDs. The difference is that in the group of further developing TDs, the warm core in the upper troposphere is intensified suddenly when it is extending to the sea surface. The warm core in the upper and lower troposphere is strengthened in a meantime. But the similar feature is not observed in the non-developing TDs. Then it may be helpful to judge the TD development by monitoring the change in its warm-core structure.

STATISTICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF SEA-LAND BREEZES IN HAINAN ISLAND

The sea-land breeze circulation(SLBC) occurs regularly at coastal locations and influences the local weather and climate significantly. In this study, based on the observed surface wind in 9 conventional meteorological stations of Hainan Island, the frequency of sea-land breeze(SLB) is studied to depict the diurnal and seasonal variations. The statistics indicated that there is a monthly average of 12.2 SLB days and an occurrence frequency of about 40%, with the maximum frequency(49%) in summer and the minimum frequency(29%) in autumn. SLB frequencies(41%) are comparable in winter and spring. A higher frequency of SLB is present in the southern and central mountains due to the enhancement effect of the mountain-valley breeze. Due to the synoptic wind the number of SLB days in the northern hilly area is less than in other areas. Moreover, the WRF model, adopted to simulate the SLBC over the island for all seasons, performs reasonably well reproducing the phenomenon, evolution and mechanism of SLBC. Chiefly affected by the difference of temperature between sea and land, the SLBC varies in coverage and intensity with the seasons and reaches the greatest intensity in summer. The typical depth is about 2.5 km for sea breeze circulation and about 1.5 km for land breeze circulation. A strong convergence zone with severe ascending motion appears on the line parallel to the major axis of the island, penetrating 60 to 100 km inland. This type of weak sea breeze convergence zone in winter is north-south oriented. The features of SLBC in spring are similar both to that in summer with southerly wind and to that in winter with easterly wind. The coverage and intensity of SLBC in autumn is the weakest and confined to the southwest edge of the central mountainous area. The land breeze is inherently very weak and easily affected by the topography and weather. The coverage and intensity of the land breeze convergence line is significantly less than those of the sea breeze. The orographic forcing of the central mountain exhibits significant impacts on low-level airflow. A windward land breeze front usually occurs along the coastline between the wee hours and the morning in summer, with an arc-shaped convergence zone about 10 to 30 km off shore. In winter the arc-shaped convergence zone is weak and appears only in the southeast coastal area. Landing on the flat regions of northern to western parts of the island and going inland from there, the sea breeze front at the leeward side meets with that at the windward side in the centre of the island when sea breeze fully develops, causing an intense convergence zone throughout the whole island. Consistent with prevailing winds in direction, the windward sea breeze and leeward land breeze develop quickly but are not distinguishable from background winds.

AN ANALYSIS OF DISTRIBUTION AND MESOSCALE STRUCTURE OF PRECIPITATION ABOUT LANDFALL TROPICAL CYCLONE KOPPU(0915)

Observation from automatic weather stations, radars and TRMM satellites are employed to investigate the precipitation distribution of tropical cyclone(TC) Koppu(0915) that made landfall on Guangdong province in 2009.The results show that the precipitation of landfall TC Koppu is featured by significant asymmetry and mesoscale structure, and occurs mainly to the left of its moving path. By examining the sea surface temperature(SST), water vapor flux, Q vector, vertical wind shear of environment etc., it is found out that the distribution of SST, water vapor convergence, low-level convective ascending and vertical wind shear facilitates the TC precipitation to take place to the left of the TC moving path. The mesoscale structure separated by Barnes band-pass filter presents that the precipitation of landfall KOPPU has some organized mesoscale spiral structures, which is around the TC center and composed of the form of belts or blocks. The heavy local rainfall of landfall TC Koppu is primarily associated with the rainfall due to mesoscale spiral structure.

A Recombination Clustering Technique for Forecasting of Tropical Cyclone Tracks Based on the CMA-TRAMS Ensemble Prediction System

Despite marked improvements in tropical cyclone(TC) track ensemble forecasting,forecasters still have difficulty in making quick decisions when facing multiple potential predictions,so it is demanding to develop post-processing techniques reducing the uncertainty in TC track forecasts,and one of such techniques is the cluster-based methods.To improve the effect and efficiency of the previous cluster-based methods,this study adopts recombination clustering(RC) by optimizing the use of limited TC variables and constructing better features that can accurately capture the good TC track forecasts from the ensemble prediction system(EPS) of the China Meteorological Administration Tropical Regional Atmosphere Model for the South China Sea(CMA-TRAMS).The RC technique is further optimized by constraining the number of clusters using the absolute track bias between the ensemble mean(EM) and ensemble spread(ES).Finally,the RC-based deterministic and weighted probabilistic forecasts are compared with the TC track forecasts from traditional methods.It is found that(1) for deterministic TC track forecasts,the RC-based TC track forecasts outperform all other methods at 12–72-h lead times;compared with the skillful EM(118.6 km),the improvements introduced by the use of RC reach up to 10.8%(8.1 km),10.2%(13.7 km),and 8.7%(20.5 km) at forecast times of 24,48,and 72 h,respectively.(2) For probabilistic TC track forecasts,RC yields significantly more accurate and discriminative forecasts than traditional equal-weight track forecasts,by increasing the weight of the best cluster,with a decrease of 4.1% in brier score(BS) and an increase of 1.4% in area under the relative operating characteristic curve(AUC).(3) In particular,for cases with recurved tracks,such as typhoons Saudel(2017) and Bavi(2008),RC significantly reduces track errors relative to EM by 56.0%(125.5 km) and 77.7%(192.2 km),respectively.Our results demonstrate that the RC technique not only improves TC track forecasts but also helps to unravel skillful ensemble members,and is likely useful for feature construction in machine learning.

Impacts of Sea Surface Temperature on the Interannual Variability of Winter Haze Days in Guangdong Province

The impact of sea surface temperature(SST)on winter haze in Guangdong province(WHDGD)was analyzed on the interannual scale.It was pointed out that the northern Indian Ocean and the northwest Pacific SST play a leading role in the variation of WHDGD.Cold(warm)SST anomalies over the northern Indian Ocean and the Northwest Pacific stimulate the eastward propagation of cold(warm)Kelvin waves through the Gill forced response,causing Ekman convergence(divergence)in the western Pacific,inducing abnormal cyclonic(anticyclonic)circulation.It excites the positive(negative)Western Pacific teleconnection pattern(WP),which results in the temperature and the precipitation decrease(increase)in Guangdong and forms the meteorological variables conditions that are conducive(not conducive)to the formation of haze.ENSO has an asymmetric influence on WHDGD.In El Niño(La Niña)winters,there are strong(weak)coordinated variations between the northern Indian Ocean,the northwest Pacific,and the eastern Pacific,which stimulate the negative(positive)phase of WP teleconnection.In El Niño winters,the enhanced moisture is attributed to the joint effects of the horizontal advection from the surrounding ocean,vertical advection from the moisture convergence,and the increased atmospheric apparent moisture sink(Q2)from soil evaporation.The weakening of the atmospheric apparent heat source(Q1)in the upper layer is not conducive to the formation of inversion stratification.In contrast,in La Niña winters,the reduced moisture is attributed to the reduced upward water vapor transport and Q2 loss.Due to the Q1 increase in the upper layer,the temperature inversion forms and suppresses the diffusion of haze.

Comparative evaluation of the impact of GRAPES and MM5 meteorology on CMAQ prediction over Pearl River Delta, China

The community multiscale air quality (CMAQ) model was used to forecast air quality over the Pearl River Delta region from December 2013 to January 2014.The pollution forecasting performance of CMAQ coupled with two different meteorological models,i.e.,the global/regional assimilation and prediction system (GRAPES) and the fifth-generation mesoscale model (MM5),was assessed by comparison with observational data.The effects of meteorological factors and physicochemical processes on the forecast results were discussed through process analysis.The results showed that both models exhibited good performance but that of GRAPES-CMAQ was better.GRAPES was superior in predicting the overall variation tendencies of meteorological fields,but it showed large deviations in atmospheric pressure and wind speed.This contributed to the higher correlation coefficients of the pollutants with GRAPES-CMAQ but with greater deviations.The underestimations of nitrate and ammonium salt contributed to the underestimations of both particulate matter and extinction coefficients.Source emissions made the only positive contributions to surface layer SO2,CO,and NO.It was found that O3 originated primarily from horizontal and vertical transport and that its consumption was predominantly via chemical processes.Conversely,NO2 was found derived primarily from chemical production.

A PRELIMINARY STUDY ON THE QUALITY CONTROL METHOD FOR GUANGDONG GPS/PWV DATA AND ITS EFFECTS ON PRECIPITATION FORECASTS IN ITS ANNUALLY FIRST RAINING SEASON

We first analyzed GPS precipitable water vapor(GPS/PWV) available from a ground-based GPS observation network in Guangdong from 1 August 2009 to 27 August 2012 and then developed a method of quality control before GPS/PWV data is assimilated into the GRAPES 3DVAR system. This method can reject the outliers effectively. After establishing the criterion for quality control, we did three numerical experiments to investigate the impact on the precipitation forecast with and without the quality-controlled GPS/PWV data before they are assimilated into the system.In the numerical experiments, two precipitation cases(on 6 to 7 May, 2010 and 27 to 28 April, 2012 respectively) that occurred in the annually first raining season of Guangdong were selected. The results indicated that after quality control,only the GPS/PWV data that deviates little from the NCEP/PWV data can be assimilated into the system, has reasonable adjustment of the initial water vapor above Guangdong, and eventually improves the intensity and location of 24-h precipitation forecast significantly.

MEASUREMENTS OF PARTICLE NUMBER SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS AND NEW PARTICLE FORMATION EVENTS DURING WINTER IN THE PEARL RIVER DELTA REGION,CHINA

Particle number size distribution(PNSD) between 10 nm and 20 μm were measured in the Pearl River Delta(PRD) region in winter 2011.The average particle number concentration of the nucleation mode(10-20 nm),Aitken mode(20-100 nm),accumulation mode(100 nm-1μm) and coarse mode(1-20 μm) particles were 1 552,7 470,4 012,and 19 cm-3,respectively.The volume concentration of accumulation mode particles with peak at 300 nm accounted for over 70% of the total volume concentration.Diurnal variations and dependencies on meteorological parameters of PNSD were investigated.The diurnal variation of nucleation mode particles was mainly influenced by new particle formation events,while the diurnal variation of Aitken mode particles correlated to the traffic emission and the growth process of nucleation mode particles.When the PRD region was controlled by a cold high pressure,conditions of low relative humidity,high wind speed and strong radiation are favorable for the occurrence of new particle formation(NPF) events.The frequency of occurrence of NPF events was 21.3% during the whole measurement period.Parameters describing NPF events,including growth rate(GR) and source rate of condensable vapor(Q),were slightly larger than those in previous literature.This suggests that intense photochemical and biological activities may be the source of condensable vapor for particle growth,even during winter in the PRD.

THE DOWNSCALING FORECASTING OF SEASONAL PRECIPITATION IN GUANGDONG BASED ON CLIMATE FORECAST SYSTEMS PRODUCTS

The Climate Forecast Systems(CFS) datasets provided by National Centers for Environmental Prediction(NCEP), which cover the time from 1981 to 2008, can be used to forecast atmospheric circulation nine months ahead. Compared with the NCEP datasets, CFS datasets successfully simulate many major features of the Asian monsoon circulation systems and exhibit reasonably high skill in simulating and predicting ENSO events. Based on the CFS forecasting results, a downscaling method of Optimal Subset Regression(OSR) and mean generational function model of multiple variables are used to forecast seasonal precipitation in Guangdong. After statistical analysis tests, sea level pressure, wind and geopotential height field are made predictors. Although the results are unstable in some individual seasons, both the OSR and multivariate mean generational function model can provide good forecasting as operational tests score more than sixty points. CFS datasets are available and updated in real time, as compared with the NCEP dataset. The downscaling forecast method based on the CFS datasets can predict three seasons of seasonal precipitation in Guangdong, enriching traditional statistical methods. However, its forecasting stability needs to be improved.

Synergistic Effect of the Planetary-scale Disturbance, Typhoon and Meso-β-scale Convective Vortex on the Extremely Intense Rainstorm on 20 July 2021 in Zhengzhou

On 20 July 2021,northern Henan Province in China experienced catastrophic flooding as a result of an extremely intense rainstorm,with a record-breaking hourly rainfall of 201.9 mm during 0800–0900 UTC and daily accumulated rainfall in Zhengzhou City exceeding 600 mm(“Zhengzhou 7.20 rainstorm”for short).The multi-scale dynamical and thermodynamical mechanisms for this rainstorm are investigated based on station-observed and ERA-5 reanalysis datasets.The backward trajectory tracking shows that the warm,moist air from the northwestern Pacific was mainly transported toward Henan Province by confluent southeasterlies on the northern side of a strong typhoon In-Fa(2021),with the convergent southerlies associated with a weaker typhoon Cempaka(2021)concurrently transporting moisture northward from South China Sea,supporting the rainstorm.In the upper troposphere,two equatorward-intruding potential vorticity(PV)streamers within the planetary-scale wave train were located over northern Henan Province,forming significant divergent flow aloft to induce stronger ascending motion locally.Moreover,the converged moist air was also blocked by the mountains in western Henan Province and forced to rise so that a deep meso-β-scale convective vortex(MβCV)was induced over the west of Zhengzhou City.The PV budget analyses demonstrate that the MβCV development was attributed to the positive feedback between the rainfall-related diabatic heating and high-PV under the strong upward PV advection during the Zhengzhou 7.20 rainstorm.Importantly,the MβCV was forced by upper-level larger-scale westerlies becoming eastward-sloping,which allowed the mixtures of abundant raindrops and hydrometeors to ascend slantwise and accumulate just over Zhengzhou City,resulting in the record-breaking hourly rainfall locally.

A Time Neighborhood Method for the Verification of Landfalling Typhoon Track Forecast

Landfalling typhoons can cause disasters over large regions.The government and emergency responders need to take measures to mitigate disasters according to the forecast of landfall position,while slight timing error can be ignored.The reliability of operational model forecasts of typhoon landfall position needs to be evaluated beforehand,according to the forecasts and observation of historical cases.In the evaluation of landfalling typhoon track,the traditional method based on point-to-point matching methods could be influenced by the predicted typhoon translation speed.Consequently,the traditional track evaluation method may result in a large track error even if the predicted landfall position is close to observation.The purpose of this paper is to address the above issue using a simple evaluation method of landfalling typhoon track forecast based on the time neighborhood approach.In this new method,the timing error was lessened to highlight the importance of the position error during the landfall of typhoon.The properties of the time neighborhood method are compared with the traditional method based on numerical forecast results of 12 landfalling typhoon cases.Results demonstrated that the new method is not sensitive to the sampling frequency,and that the difference between the time neighborhood and traditional method will be more obvious when the moving speed of typhoon is moderate(between 15−30 km h^(−1)).The time neighborhood concept can be easily extended to a broader context when one attempts to examine the position error more than the timing error.

Recent Unusual Consecutive Spring Tropical Cyclones in North Atlantic and Winter Oceanic Precursor Signals

Although the North Atlantic(NA)hurricane season has been reported to start increasingly early,historical longterm changes in NA spring tropical cyclone(TC)activity have not been examined in previous studies.We find that spring TCs have become more frequent and intense,and they have more closely approached the US coastline over the past four decades,thus increasing the probability of landfall.A long-term increase in the NA sea surface temperature(SST)and northward incursion of warm water may be responsible for the increasing number,intensity,and northward shift of spring TCs.In addition,the interdecadal winter NA SST tripole mode may induce a North Atlantic Oscillation(NAO)-like atmospheric response in the following spring,which controls spring TC tracks via modulating the strength and position of the NA subtropical high(or the Bermuda high).The superposition of the interdecadal positive winter SST tripole on the NA warming trend has contributed to the anomalous enhancement and northward shift of spring TC activity,increasing the spring TC risks in the US in the past six years.

Forecast Performance of the Pre-operational CMA-TRAMS(EPS)in South China During April-September 2020

The mesoscale ensemble prediction system based on the Tropical Regional Atmosphere Model for the South China Sea(CMA-TRAMS(EPS))has been pre-operational since April 2020 at South China Regional Meteorological Center(SCRMC),which was developed by the Guangzhou Institute of Tropical and Marine Meteorology(GITMM).To better understand the performance of the CMA-TRAMS(EPS)and provide guidance to forecasters,we assess the performance of this system on both deterministic and probabilistic forecasts from April to September 2020 in this study through objective verification.Compared with the control(deterministic)forecasts,the ensemble mean of the CMATRAMS(EPS)shows advantages in most non-precipitation variables.In addition,the threat score indicates that the CMA-TRAMS(EPS)obviously improves light and heavy rainfall forecasts in terms of the probability-matched mean.Compared with the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasts operational ensemble prediction system(ECMWF-EPS),the CMA-TRAMS(EPS)improves the probabilistic forecasts of light rainfall in terms of accuracy,reliability and discrimination,and this system also improves the heavy rainfall forecasts in terms of discrimination.Moreover,two typical heavy rainfall cases in south China during the pre-summer rainy season are investigated to visually demonstrate the deterministic and probabilistic forecasts,and the results of these two cases indicate the differences and advantages(deficiencies)of the two ensemble systems.