The Effects of Ocean Surface Waves on Tropical Cyclone Intensity: Numerical Simulations Using a Regional Atmosphere-Ocean-Wave Coupled Model

Tropical cyclones (TCs), especially landfalling intense storms often pose serious threats to life and property in coastal areas. Although TC track forecast skill has been improved in the past decades, the progress of advancing the intensity forecast lags that of the track forecast. One possible limiting factor is the absence of ocean surface waves in forecast systems. To better represent the interaction of TC and underlying ocean, a regional atmosphere-ocean-wave coupled model is employed in this study. Twenty-one TCs of a whole year in 2013 are retrospectively simulated through twin simulations, a Control and a Fully coupled run. Results show that TC intensity bias has been significantly reduced in the fully coupled simulation, in which five ocean surface wave related physical processes are considered, including wave modulation of momentum flux, sea spray effect on enthalpy flux, surface current and Stokes drift on air sea flux, non-breaking wave induced mixing in the upper ocean as well as rain induced ocean surface cooling. A case study approach is used to diagnose the effect of individual surface wave related physical process on TC simulations. Similar to the effect of sea spray, surface waves also act as positive feedback on TC intensification by modulating air-sea momentum flux. Absolute angular momentum budget analysis suggests that larger radial inflows and stronger updrafts near the eyewall promote the radial and vertical advections of absolute angular momentum and in turn lead to a stronger TC in Fully coupled simulation. The TC structure and size agree better with observations in Fully coupled simulation.

Automated summary

The study demonstrates that the fully coupled simulation, which considers five ocean surface wave related physical processes, significantly reduces TC intensity bias. Surface waves act as a positive feedback on TC intensification in the simulation, leading to a stronger TC with better agreement on structure and size compared to observations.