A three-dimensional Lagrangian hurricane eyewall computation

✍ Scribed by Blake Rutherford; Gerhard Dangelmayr

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 751 KB
• Volume: 136
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0035-9009
• DOI: 10.1002/qj.703

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The computation of a hurricane eyewall is necessary to determine mixing between the eyewall and the neighbouring eye and environment regions. We define a Lagrangian eyewall region by computing the Lagrangian structures of hyperbolic stability that distinguish the eyewall from surrounding regions. The methods used guarantee the stability and continuity of the eyewall for time‐dependent velocity fields. As an added benefit of our methods, fast convergence gives the opportunity to utilize the methods in real‐time simulations. The exact location of Lagrangian coherent structures is accomplished through a ridge‐extraction algorithm, which is efficient for locating the ridges found in this model. A complete construction of three‐dimensional coherent structures is accomplished by overlaying horizontally continuous ridge curves on z levels. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society