Rapid Intensification of Hurricane Ian (2022) in High Shear Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres

Initially a Category 3 storm, Hurricane Ian (2022) rapidly intensified on the West Florida Shelf reaching Category 5 over the course of about 12 hr. Intensification occurred despite inhibiting factors such as high axial tilt, high vertical wind shear, low atmospheric moisture, and transit over a relatively shallow continental shelf. Using a high-resolution simulation of Hurricane Ian from the Hurricane Weather Research Forecasting (HWRF) model, we examine the factors that both hindered and supported rapid intensification (RI) by blending various methods. We show that an increase in diabatic heating in the eyewall led to an inward radial advection of momentum, seen in both the absolute angular momentum budget and in the azimuthal wind budget. Analysis of the moist static energy budget indicates that the substantial latent heat flux from the surface was enough to balance heat losses through storm outflow. For instance, surface latent heat fluxes exceeded 1,500 W m−2 on the West Florida Continental Shelf. As suggested by actual ocean temperature observations that substantially exceeded those in the HWRF simulation, the latent heating may have even been larger. Physical explanations for discrepancies between the simulated Hurricane Ian and observations are provided, particularly those pertaining to the coastal ocean at the time of Ian's passage. This research provides a comprehensive explanation of the RI of a hurricane using momentum budget analyses as part of a coupled air-sea analysis. Our findings demonstrate the importance of in situ oceanic air-sea measurements in evaluating the performance of coupled models, especially for hurricanes.