Why did numerical weather forecasting systems fail to predict the Hurricane Otis’s development?
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Abstract
Hurricane Otis (HO) occurred in the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP), intensifying rapidly and unexpectedly, making landfall near Acapulco at 06:25 UTC on October 25, 2023 as a category five hurricane. Official and unofficial national weather forecasts (NWF) failed to predict HO’s development, trajectory, and intensification. To analyze the reasons for the failure of the NWF, we conducted two experiments using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, with Global Forecast System (GFS) and fifth-generation ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis (ERA5) data as initial condition (IC). Our results showed that some fields in the GFS data, such as relative humidity, convective available potential energy, and even sea surface temperature, were more favorable for the development and intensification of the disturbance compared to ERA5. However, the three-dimensional structure of the wind field in the ETP in GFS did not contribute to the initial development of HO. Additionally, we explored the WRF’s sensitivity to different model configurations to simulate the trajectory and intensity of the hurricane using a coupled ocean-atmosphere system composed of WRF and a three-dimensional upper-ocean circulation model based on Price-Weller-Pinkel. Our numerical experiments involve modifications in the IC, cumulus parameterizations (CP), roughness coefficients, spatial resolutions, different time steps, and an idealized coupled model. The sensitivity test reveals the significance of the CP scheme, where the Kain-Fritsch was the only one that helped simulate the HO properly, altogether with increased spatial resolution. Furthermore, ocean-atmosphere coupling improves the prediction of the landfall time and location of the HO. However, no experiment captured the intensity or rapid intensification of HO.
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