Intensity variation of tropical cyclones(TCs),especially that of coastal or landfalling TCs,is of great concern in current research.Most of the research papers,however,focus on intensification processes of TCs;only a few discuss decay processes in the lifetime of a TC.In the daily weather operation related to TCs,it is challenging when a TC weakens and/or disappears suddenly,because it brings more difficulties than the forecast of intensifying TCs does.Overestimation of a decaying landfalling TC would lead to over-preparation of defensive measures and result in"crying wolf"mentality with adverse effects.This study summarized physical mechanisms that dominate the decaying process of TCs and listed several possible dynamical factors:reduced level of air temperature,too large or too small speed,contraction of TC size amplification of TC's core,and lightning number in a TC.
Typhoon Vicente(2012) underwent rapid intensification(RI) within 24 h before landfall in China's Mainland. Analysis of the large-scale environment and characteristics of Vicente identifies the aforementioned intensification as classic RI. The process occurred in an environmental flow with a deep-layer shear ranging from 5 ms-1 to 8 ms-1. Convection caused by persistent vertical shear forcing of the vortex was observed primarily in the downshear left quadrant of the storm. However, radar and satellite observations indicate that the northern convection of the inner core of Vicente quickly developed in the down-shear right three hours near landfall.
In daily typhoon operation, identifying the intensity of typhoons is always a contentious problem, which can be attributed to the absence of direct observational data when typhoons are present on the ocean. When typhoons move to the offshore region, where many automatic weather stations(AWSs) are present, utilizing automatic observations in non-standard conditions is a good way of identifying the intensity or wind of a typhoon. Before identification, AWS data should be conversed or revised based on statistical experiences from a multilayer wind tower. In this study, the intensity of Haikui(1211) at the landing stage(from 08071200 UTC to 08071920 UTC) is revised carefully. Calculating the wind conversion coefficient between different heights from a 300 m multilayer tower observation, the wind data caught by two offshore AWSs were converted to the standard wind of 10 meters and used to identify the intensity of the landing Haikui. The maximum surface wind of Haikui in the landing period was about 45 m/s to 48 m/s and then reduced to 40 m/s to 42 m/s approximately just before landing.On the basis of the discussion in this study, the AWS data in a non-standard environment can be utilized to determine the surface wind at 10 m height by arithmetic conversion. This implies that we should pay more attention and patient to the wind data observed in offshore island AWSs during typhoon identification.
This study introduces a new dynamical quantity, shear gradient vorticity (SGV), which is defined as vertical wind shear multiplying the horizontal component of vorticity gradient, aiming to diagnose heavy precipitation induced by some strong convective weather systems. The vorticity gradient component can be used to study the collision or merging process between different vortexes or the deformation of a vortex with a sharp vorticity gradient. Vertical wind shear, another contributed component of SGV, always represents the environmental dynamical factor in meteorology. By the combined effect of the two components, overall, SGV can represent the interaction between the environmental wind shear and the evolution of vortexes with a large vorticity gradient. Other traditional vorticity-like dynamical quantities (such as helicity) have the limitation in the diagnosis of the convection, since they do not consider the vorticity gradient. From this perspective, SGV has the potential to diagnose some strong convective weather processes, such as Extratropical Transition (ET) of tropical cyclones and the evolution of multicell storms. The forecast performance of SGV for the numerical ET case of Typhoon Toraji (0108) has been evaluated. Compared with helicity, SGV has shown a greater advantage to forecast the distribution of heavy precipitation more accurately, especially in the frontal zone.
A heavy rainfall process, which occurred in Shanghai during 5-6 August, 2001 from a landfalling tropical depression (TD),is examined with a control numerical experiment based on MM5 model. It is found that the contours of generalized equivalent potential temperature (θ*) are almost vertical with respect to horizontal surfaces near the TD center and more densely distributed than those of equivalent potential temperature (θe).Because the atmosphere is non-uniformly saturated in reality, θ* takes the place of θe in the definition of convective vorticity vector (CVV) so that a new vector, namely the generalized convective vorticity vector (CVV*), is applied in this study. Since CVV* can reflect both the secondary circulation and the variation of horizontal moist baroclinicity, the vertical integration of vertical component of CVV* is found, in this study, to represent the rainfall areas in the TD case better than potential vorticity (PV), moist potential vorticity (MPV), generalized moist potential vorticity (Pm), and CVV, with high-value area of CVV* corresponding to heavy-rainfall area. Moreover, the analysis from CVV* implies that the Hangzhou Bay might play an important role in the heavy rain process. A sensitivity experiment without the Hangzhou Bay is then designed and compared with the control run. It is found that the CVV* becomes weaker than that in the control run, implying that the elimination of Hangzhou Bay results in reduced rainfall. Further analyses show that the Hangzhou Bay provides sufficient water vapor and surface heat flux to the TD system, which is very important to the genesis and development of mesoscale cloud clusters around the TD and the associated heavy rainfall.
