Tropical Cyclones in the Non-hydrostatic GFDL HiRAM

Abstract:

A new, non-hydrostatic version of Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) High-Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM) is being developed for tropical cyclone (TC) studies, with a focus on improving the climatology of TC genesis and landfall while maintaining the realism of the large-scale climate. This model marks a radical shift from the hydrostatic dynamics used by previous GFDL climate models. It uses a C384 (25 km) horizontal grid with 63 vertical levels, and includes many updates in the dynamical core, cloud microphysics and cloud convective parameterization. A new land model configuration with the effects of lakes and rivers, as well as many other land-surface process improvements is also tested and included. The long-term TC properties, e.g. storm counts, geographical distribution, and intensity, are examined in several climatology and AMIP(Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project)-type simulations. We compare the results both to observations and to hydrostatic HiRAM which achieved a high prediction skill of Atlantic TCs.