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Hurricane Forecasts with a Global Mesoscale-Resolving Model: Preliminary Results with Hurricane Katrina (2005)

Original article: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2006GL026143

Summary

This 2006 Geophysical Research Letters article presented early hurricane forecasts using a global mesoscale-resolving model applied to Hurricane Katrina. The work addressed a long-standing limitation of coarser general circulation models: insufficient resolution to represent hurricane near-eye structure and intensity. By using very high horizontal resolution on NASA supercomputing resources, the study demonstrated the potential of global models to resolve mesoscale storm processes and was later highlighted by AGU and Science.

Comparison of wind distribution near Hurricane Katrina's eye in observations and global mesoscale model simulations — Figure 3. Comparison of wind distribution near the hurricane eye in a 2 x 2 degree box among (a) AOML high-resolution (0.0542 degree) surface wind analysis data at 0730 UTC August 29, (b) the 0.25 degree 10 m winds at 99 h simulations ending 1500 UTC August 29, (c) the 0.125 degree 10 m winds at 99 h simulations ending 1500 UTC August 29, and (d) the 0.125 degree 10 m winds without convection parameterization at 96 h simulations ending 1200 UTC August 29. Source: Shen et al. (2006), Geophysical Research Letters.