UCAR Caribbean Project

- Monitoring and Forecast of Hurricane Activity in Caribbean Ocean -

Special Real-time Case study

Ground-based GPS PWV, COSMIC refractivity, and conventional meteorological observation data were assimilated for tropical storm forecast

Storm Watch
Initialization: 2008-09-12 00Z
1 to 2 day forecast (valid for 2008-09-13 00Z and 2008-09-14_00Z)
Pressure, Wind, and Cloud	PWV
Rainfall Forecast (accumulated for 24 hours)
09-12_00Z - 09-13_00Z	09-13_00Z - 09-14_00Z
Track Forecast
Latest forecast (IC: 2008-09-12_00Z)
Note: In the plots avove forecast shows lower hurricane intensity due to lack of spin-up time for short-term forecast.
IC: 2008-09-11_00Z (1 day old)	IC: 2008-09-10_00Z (2 days old)
IC: 2008-09-09_00Z (3 days old)	IC: 2008-09-08_00Z (4 days old)

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Related links:
  National Hurricane Center
  Weather Underground: Tropical Storm

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Review of Gustav Real-time Forecast
Track	Notes
	Forecast model: WRF V2.2 Initial and Lateral Boundary Conditions (IC and LBC): NCEP GFS Initilization: 00 UTC Forecast domain size: 361x261x38 Data assimilation (DA): WRF-VAR (3DVAR) DA time window: Cold 3DVAR at initialization time Forecast hours: 4 days Background error statistics: NCEP NMC method with 14 days control forecast Observation: COSMIC refractivity, Ground-based GPS PWV, Conventional Best track: "Forecast Advisories" from NHC, NOAA Possible improvement: Cycling 3DVAR, Bugus DA in mature stage of hurricane

Forecast with GPS PWV from UCAR Caribbean Network

O minus B at the 1st DA Time Detail (6 hour DA time window)	24 hr Forecast of PWV

	6 hr (Analysis at 6 hr cycling)	12 hr (6 hr free forecast)	18 hr (12 hr free forecast)	24 hr (18 hr free forecast)
Ps (hPa)
PWV (mm)
Wind (m/s) + Ts (deg. C)
Cloud Animation Animation cloud+wind

UCAR Caribbean PWV (left)/ NWS NHC (right)

GPS PWV assimilated into WRF system

GOES Images : Water Vapor (left) / IR (right)