Sensitivity of Physical Schemes in WRF Simulations on the Track and
Intensity of Landfall Tropical Cyclones Along the East Coast of China
Abstract
In order to study sensitivity of physical parameterization schemes
(PPSs) in the WRF model on the simulation of landfall tropical cyclones
(TCs), we design 43 sensitivity experiments based on three types of
PPSs, and select three disastrous TCs that landed on the east coast of
China, namely Lekima (2019), Hagupit (2020) and In-Fa (2021).
Qualitative analysis and quantitative evaluation are carried out from
the aspects of model simulated TC track and intensity, as well as the
landfall position, time and intensity. The 72h-average track errors of
all sensitivity experiments are 105 km, 85 km and 38 km, by three TCs
respectively. The temporal variations of simulated TC intensity in all
sensitivity experiments are highly consistent with the observations, but
the simulated TC intensities are inevitably weaker than the
observations. The results of three groups of experiments show that the
track and intensity of landfall TCs are most sensitive to cloud
microphysical parameterization scheme (CMPS), but insensitive to
planetary boundary layer parameterization scheme (PBLPS). All the
simulated landfall positions are more southward than the observations,
and the intensities at landfall moment are underestimated compared with
the observations. The TC landfall position is the most sensitive to
cumulus convection parameterization scheme (CCPS), followed by PBLPS and
CMPS. However, the situation for the TC landfall intensity is the
opposite. Finally, some optimal PPSs for simulating TC track, intensity
and landfall position are given, so as to provide some references for
the simulation of landfall TCs in regional prediction systems.