Numerical simulation of tropical cyclone thane: role of boundary layer and surface drag parameterization schemes

In the recent times, several advanced numerical models are utilized for the prediction of the intensity, track and landfall time of a cyclone. Still there are number of issues concerning their prediction and the limitation of numerical models in addressing those issues. The most pertinent question is how intensive a cyclone can become before it makes a landfall and where the cyclone moves under the ambient large-scale flow. In this paper, detailed study has been carried out using Weather Research Forecast model with two boundary schemes to address the above question by considering a recent tropical cyclone in Bay of Bengal region of North Indian Ocean. In addition, the impact of the surface drag effect on the low-level winds and the intensity of the cyclone are also studied. The result reveals that large differences are noted in the ocean surface fluxes between YSU and MYJ with MYJ producing relatively higher fluxes than YSU. It is found that the YSU scheme produced a better simulation for the THANE cyclone in terms of winds, pressure distribution and cloud fractions. Comparison with available observations indicated the characteristics of horizontal divergence, vorticity and vector track positions produced by YSU experiment are more realistic than with MYJ and other experiments. However, when the drag coefficient is changed as 0.5 or 2.0 from the default values, appreciable changes in the surface fluxes are not noticed. A maximum precipitation is reported in YSU as compared to the MYJ PBL scheme for the tropical cyclone THANE.