Impact of Microphysical Parameterizations on Satellite All-Sky Infrared Data Assimilation and Practical Predictability of Hurricane Harvey (2017)

4. Satellites provide the majority of observations of tropical cyclones (TCs) when they are over the open ocean. These observations are under-utilized in operational global and regional forecasting models as most of the cloudy and precipitation-affected observations are discarded. Recent works have shown that assimilating all-sky infrared (IR) radiances from geostationary satellites improves TC track, intensity, and rainfall forecasts. This study examines how two different microphysical parametrization schemes impact all-sky IR radiance assimilation and subsequent forecasts of Hurricane Harvey. Because model hydrometeor fields that are used to simulate IR radiances are strongly constrained by the model microphysics scheme, Harvey’s dynamic and thermodynamic structure becomes very different when changing the microphysics schemes, which also leads to changes in subsequent intensity forecasts. Additionally, sensitivity forecasts suggest that intensity forecast errors in this study are primarily controlled by the dynamical fields in the analyses and, to a lesser extent at certain stages of Harvey’s development, the hydrometeor and moisture fields, while the microphysics schemes used during the free forecasts generally have a negligible impact on Harvey’s intensity forecasts. This data contains the PSU WRF-EnKF analysis output for each of the 60 ensembles from August 22 12 UTC until August 25 12 UTC, hourly. It also contains ATCF files from each of the forecasts ran using the ensemble mean for chosen times and with the specific adjustments to different model fields mentioned above.