Tropical Cyclone Simulations with WRF Using High Performance Computing

Abstract

Tropical cyclone (TC) Bud occurred over the Eastern Pacific Ocean from 9 June to 16 June 2018 reaching, a category-4 hurricane status (H4) due to its strong sustained winds and gusts. In this study, we simulate this TC to reproduce its track path, direction, and strength to determine the best model physics configurations that weather agencies could use to forecast TC tracks over the Eastern Pacific Ocean, adjacent to the Mexican coastline. To achieve this goal, the sensitivity for the impact of different microphysics and cumulus parameterization schemes is carried out through high-performance computer simulations, with the WRF model using the cluster CÓDICE B2 at Centro de Investigación en Computación (CIC) of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN). The realism of the TC for the different schemes is assessed by comparing the simulations and the best track data taken from the National Hurricane Center (NHC-NOAA). The NCEPGFS forecast data is used as initial and boundary conditions. The evolution of wind and minimum pressure at sea level for the different physics combination runs are also compared with the best track data. We found that the track paths and intensities improve when Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is allowed to evolve with the modeled atmosphere via computer simulations.