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Using NOAA UAS Assets and OSSE/DA Capabilities to Improve Sampling Strategies and Numerical Prediction of Tropical Cyclone Track, Intensity, and Structure

Principal Investigators:

Project Members:

Collaborating Scientists:

Lance Bosart (Univ. at Albany-SUNY)

Ryan Torn (Univ. at Albany-SUNY)

Funding Information:
  • Funding Agency: NOAA-OAR
  • Award Number: NA14OAR4830172
  • Funding Period: 08/01/2014-07/31/2017
  • Award Amount: $1,249,008

Objectives:

This investigation proposes to utilize a combination of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), satellite data, numerical modeling and data assimilation to address one of the main objectives identified by NOAA’s Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT) program: quantify the significance of unmanned observations to high impact weather prediction through data impact studies using Observing System Experiments (OSE) using unmanned observations collected during prototype operational field missions and Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSE) based on expected unmanned observing capabilities.  Specific emphasis of this effort will include mission design and support for NOAA Global Hawk missions into tropical cyclones (TCs), optimizing Global Hawk aircraft real-time sampling strategies in both the TC inner core and the surrounding environment, using Global Hawk data to investigate various aspects of the TC inner core and surrounding environment (e.g. warm core, boundary layer, and cirrus canopy regions) in the context of TC intensity change, and numerical modeling analyses that will use a combination of high-resolution, multi-scale HWRF, a state-of-the-art, ensemble-based, high-resolution DA system (HEDAS; Aksoy et al. 2012 and 2013, Aksoy 2013), and a comprehensive OSSE platform that combines all of these tools in an end-to-end system with a wide range of diagnostic tools designed to investigate TCs.

References:


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