Tropical Cyclone Center Estimates Purely From FY-3E WindRAD Measurements in the Dawn-Dusk Orbit

Abstract

The first C- and Ku-band dual-frequency scatterometer instrument (WindRAD) on board the world's first early-morning-orbiting meteorological satellite Fengyun-3E (FY-3E) has the capability to measure global ocean surface winds. However, WindRAD cannot determine the center locations of tropical cyclones (TCs) because it is limited by coarse spatial resolution. In this work, a relatively simple model is applied to identify the storm centers, using ocean wind measurements collected by the WindRAD scatterometer. The model—estimated storm centers are determined to minimize the errors between model—simulated winds and WindRAD measurements. Our data set consists of all WindRAD overpasses of TCs during 2022 and 2023 in the West Pacific, East Pacific, North Atlantic and Northern Indian Oceans. The average errors between the WindRAD model estimates and the reported best-track storm center locations are 51, 40, and 25 km, for tropical storms, category 1–2 storms and major storms (>49 m s⁻¹), respectively. Our model is both objective and automatic, thereby avoiding subjectivity and possible errors related to manual analysis.