Abstract:
Over the past five years, we
have seen significant improvement in GFS hurricane track forecast skills for
forecasts out to four days. The improvement in GFS hurricane track forecast
from Day 5 and beyond is relatively slow and not as evident. In this informal
presentation, we present preliminary diagnosis of GFS height, wind, and
tropical cyclone motion errors during the 2012 North Atlantic hurricane season.
We show systematic errors in height and wind fields that may impact hurricane
track forecast. These systematic errors are likely to be physics related. We
also present detailed analysis of a few selected 2012 Atlantic hurricane cases.
These detailed analyses highlight how errors in sub-synoptic scale and mesoscale circulations can impact the track forecast of
individual storms.