Abstract
In this study, the characteristics of tropical cyclones (TCs) over the East Asia Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment domain are examined with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Eight 20-year (1989–2008) simulations are performed using the WRF model, with lateral boundary forcing from the ERA-Interim reanalysis, to test the sensitivity of TC simulation to interior spectral nudging (SN, including nudging time interval, nudging variables) and radiation schemes [Community Atmosphere Model (CAM), Rapid Radiative Transfer Model (RRTM)]. The simulated TCs are compared with the observation from the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers TC best tracks. It is found that all WRF runs can simulate the climatology of key TC features such as the tracks and location/frequency of genesis reasonably well, and reproduce the inter-annual variations and seasonal cycle of TC counts. The SN runs produce enhanced TC activity compare to the runs without SN. The thermodynamic profile suggests that nudging with horizontal wind increases the unstable of thermodynamic states in tropics, which results in excessive TCs genesis. The experiments with wind and temperature nudging improve the overestimation of TCs numbers, especially suppress the TCs intensification by correct the thermodynamic profile. Weak SN coefficient enhances TCs activity significantly even with wind and temperature nudging. The analysis of TCs numbers and large scale circulation shows that the SN parameters adopted in our experiments do not appear to suppress the formation of TC. The excessive TCs activity in CAM runs relative to RRTM runs are also due to the enhanced atmospheric instability.
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Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the NOAA/National Climatic Data Center and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts for providing IBTrACS data and ERA-interim reanalysis data, respectively. We wish to express our sincere thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier manuscript. We would like to thank Lei Lili at Nanjing University for helping us improve the grammar and language usage. The research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41375075, 91425304 and 41575099) and the Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Climate Change.
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Shen, W., Tang, J., Wang, Y. et al. Evaluation of WRF model simulations of tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific over the CORDEX East Asia domain. Clim Dyn 48, 2419–2435 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3213-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3213-5