Statistical Tropical Cyclone Wind Radii Prediction Using Climatology and Persistence: Updates for the Western North Pacific Weather and Forecasting

This note describes an updated tropical cyclone vortex climatology for the western North Pacific version of the operational wind radii climatology and persistence (i.e., CLIPER) model. The update addresses known shortcomings of the existing formulation, namely, that the wind radii used to develop the original model were too small and symmetric. The underlying formulation of the CLIPER model has not changed, but the larger and more realistic vortex climatology produces improved forecast biases. Other applications that make use of the vortex climatology and CLIPER model forecasts should also benefit from the bias improvements.