Prediction of tropical cyclone SIDR at Bay of Bengal and resultant precipitation over NE India using atmospheric model VARSHA

Hirak Jyoti Goswami*, M. Devi, A.K. Barbara Department of Physics, Gauhati University, Guwahati - 781014, Assam, India Tel-Fax: 91 361 2676607
*Email: hirakjyoti.goswami@gmail.com

Abstract:
Atmospheric depressions results in severe cyclonic conditions in the pre and post monsoon season every year over Bay of Bengal which induces short time atmospheric disturbances causing significant rain over North East India. The amount of rain fall depends not only on the track of the cyclone but also on the local orography. In this paper prediction is attempted on the track of a few cyclones developed at

Bay of Bengal and the role of such situation on inducing burst type precipitation over North Eastern part of India (NEI). For this purpose VARSA model run at 8-processor Flosolver machine at Gauhati University, is used for tracking prediction. The paper discusses the approach adopted through use of wind and precipitation output from model, mapped at a grid size of 80km to predict the eye movement of cyclone. The 0000 UTC FNL analyses of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), USA are utilized to initiate the model run. The model output is compared with the high resolution gridded data set from IMD and also with satellite data from TRMM. It is found that VARSHA is capable of predicting the cyclonic track as well as the resulting rainfall of an impending cyclone three days in advance. Sothern part of NEI receives more cyclonic rain where as the Northern part experiences rainfall with lower intensity. Key words: Cyclone, VARSHA, Precipitation.

Introduction:
North East India (NEI) is highly sensitive to affects of tropical cyclones originated in the Northern Indian Ocean during the pre-monsoon (April and May) and post-monsoon (October to December) season. The annual frequency of cyclone over north Indian Ocean basin is 4-5 with ratio of 4:1 over Bay of Bengal (BOB) and Arabian Sea ( Dube et. al., 1977). It is reported that increase in tropical cyclone intensity is connected to the increasing tropical sea surface
temperatures( Webster et. al., 2005 , Trenberth et. al., 2005 , Emanuel, et. al., 2005a , Landsea, et. al. 2005 , Landsea et al., 2006 and Emanuel, et. al., 2005b).

Since the conception of first convection

theory of cyclone energy in 1841, progressive improvement on understanding of cyclone and associated atmospheric and meteorological parameters have been made through use of balloons (1904), radio sonde (in its true sense from 1927), radio detection and ranging system (Wilson et. al., 1984), when very accurate data over a wide range (both in horizontal and vertical extent) could be obtained. Numerical models and simulation studies have also proved to be very helpful in understanding the evaluation and life span of such storms (Willium et. al., 2002). Regarding cyclone and precipitation work in India, a significant growth in the study of and associated problems is observed with the introduction of weather radar (Mukherjee et. al., 1972, Raghavan et. al., 1981). Further improvement was received with the launching of Indias INSAT series of satellites. But there is not much development in prediction of precipitation at the NE due to cyclonic satiation at the Bay of Bengal (BOB). In this paper an effort is made using VARSHA mesoscale modeling system for predicting the severe cyclonic storm SIDR (11 November, 2007) at North Indian Ocean. The initial and boundary conditions to run the model VARSHA are provided from global operational analysis and forecast products of National Center for Environmental

Prediction (NCEP) available at 1 deg Lon/Lat resolution. The extreme weather parameters such as rainfall, strong wind and track of the cyclone SIDR are critically evaluated and discussed by comparing with the observed data from Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) precipitation is used to evaluate the performance of the model simulation of rainfall associated with tropical cyclones. The study shows that the track error of the cyclone with respect to location and time, intensity in terms of central pressure and wind etc. are well simulated by the model. The rainfall predicted by the VARSHA model is also in good agreement with the TRMM observed.

VARSHA:
VARSHA is a hydrostatic Global Atmospheric Model that uses spectral technique for horizontal representation of model variables. The model is used for Medium Range Weather forecasting (NCMRWF) T-80 code that is parallelized by National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) and the coding is done using FORTRAN 90. The model is gridded in 512 points in the East-West and 256 points in the North-South direction. 0000 UTC FNL data from NCEP is used to prepare the initial conditions and the orography is consistent with the FNL data. Here we compute the various parameters associated with cyclone and compared the model output with IMD to evaluate the model predictability.

Analysis and results: (Cyclone SIDR)

The super cyclonic storm SIDR formed in the central Bay of Bengal moved slowly north-west wards from the day of its intensification as a depression to the day it dissipated as a low over the Bangladesh coast. Latitudinal displacement of the observed track was 10 degree north to 24.5 degree north almost along the average meridian of 90 degree east and according to the forecast of VARSHA model with initial condition at 0000UTC of 11 November, 2007 the latitudinal

displacement was from 8.8 to 20 degree north. It is seen that the forecast position is to the left of the observed one, being close to 87 degree East rather than 90 degree east meridian which was the path of the real cyclone (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Track of SIDR, observed (IMD) and predicted (VARSHA) The minimum central pressure was 944 hPa at 1500 UTC on 15/11/2007 before it crossed Bangladesh coast near longitude 89.8 deg East around 1600 UTC as a very severe cyclonic storm as observed by IMD and the model predicted lowest pressure was 950 hPa at 1200 UTC on 15/11/2007. IMD estimated a central pressure drop of 58hPa from the day of deep depression to the day of dissipation. From the forecast of VARSHA, the cyclone was close to the Andhra Pradesh coast and crossed the coast at 1200 UTC of 15 November 2007. The major sources of error in track prediction of a tropical cyclone by an atmospheric model are the representation of the environmental flow and the correct location of the cyclone in the initial condition (Basu et. al., 2010). Comparison of the pressure as predicted by VARSHA with that observed from IMD is shown in Fig. 2. VARSHA shows an overestimation in prediction of pressure.

Fig. 2: Comparison of the minimum central pressure as predicted by VARSHA with IMD observed

Rainfall associated with SIDR

4

North east India experienced rain of various amount due to the cyclonic situations at the Bay of Bengal but depending upon the orography and also the track of the eye, amount of rain varies widely for different stations. The amount of rain observed during SIDR is shown in the table. It is seen that the southern stations like Agartala, Aizwal and the state of Meghalaya face more
50 years mean

Station

Date (dd/mm/yyyy) 11/11/2007 12/11/2007 13/11/2011 14/11/2007 15/11/2007 16/11/2007

Total

Guwahati Dibrugarh Agartala Aizawal Imphal Khasi Hill

0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0.8 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 2 0

0 0.2 17 21.3 31 0.7

36.4 2.5 97.1 64.4 13 91.7

36.4 3.5 114.1 85.7 46 92.4

17.4 24.21 46 43.18 49.2 37.3

rain as compared to Guwahati. Eastern station Imphal experiences very little affect where as in case of the extreme North-eastern station like Dibrugarh the affect is almost nil. Some forecast profiles of VARSHA along with observed profiles from TRMM are shown. It is clear from the

Fig. 3: Comparison of the VARSHA rain and wind with observed rain from TRMM and wind from NOAA

profiles that the observed track of movement of the cyclone is to the right of the forecast one. Comparison of rainfall amounts predicted by the VARSHA model with the observed from the meteorological agencies of India showed that the location of predicted rainfall was to the west of what is observed, as expected from the westward deviation of the predicted track of the cyclone. Again an underestimated amount of rainfall is shown by the model. The main reason behind the underestimation is that the model always shows an average rainfall over an area surrounding the model grid point, but rainfall magnitude may vary by an amount exceeding 50 cm in a day within a distance less than 30 km (Basu et. al., 2010).

Conclusion: It is seen from the analysis that the model was capable of predicting the north-west ward movement of the cyclone SIDR. The difference between the forecast and observed cyclone features were introduced by the movement and correct location of the cyclone in the initial condition (Basu et. al., 2010). NE India experiences precipitation as a result of cyclonic situation at the Bay of Bengal. But influence of such situation is more prominent over the southern stations like Agartala, Aizwal and Meghalaya and is less over eastern stations like Imphal. Northern station Guwahati also experiences precipitation due to cyclonic storm at BOB but for extreme North Eastern station like Dibrugarh the effect is nil. The prediction is well valid up to the 3days in advance. These results are also verified from precipitation obtained from TRMM.

References:
1. Willium E.R. and Stanfill S., The physical origin of the land-ocean contrast in lightning activity, Competes Rendus , Physique , 3 , 1277, 2002. 2. Mukherjee A.K., D.K . Rakshit and A.K. Chaudhury, On the very high tops of CB clouds around Calcutta, Indian Journal of Meteorology and Geophysics, 23, 27, 1972. 3. Raghavan S, Sivaramakrishnan T R and Ramaswamy V., Radar study of convective clouds around Madras during MONEX, National symposium on early results of MONEX 79 experiment, New Delhi, 1981. 4. Basu B.K. and Bhagyalakshmi K.., Forecast of the track and intensity of the tropical cyclone AILA over the Bay of Bengal by the global spectral atmospheric model VARSHA, Current Science, 99(6), 25 SEPTEMBER, 2010. 5. Wilson J.W., R.D. Roberts, Kessinger C. and McCarthy J., Microburst wind structure and evaluation of Doppler radar for airport wind shear detection, journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology ,23, 898-915, 1984. 6. S.K. Dube, Rao A.D., Sinha P.C., Murty T.S. and Bahulayan N., Mausam, 48, 283304, 1977. 7. Webster P.J. and Yang S., Monsoon and ENSO selectively interaction systems, Quart. J. Roy. Met. Soc., 118, 877926, 1992. 8. Trenberth K., Uncertainty in hurricanes and global warming, Science, 308, 17531754, 2005.

9. Landsea C.W., Hurricanes and global warming, Nature, 438, 1113, 2005. 10.Landsea C.W., Harper B.A., Hoarau K. and Kanff J.A., Can we detect trends in extreme tropical cyclones?, Science, 313, 452454, 2006. 11.Emanuel K., Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years, Nature, 436, 686688, 2005. 12.Emanuel K.., Are there trends in hurricane destruction?, Nature, 436, 686688, 2005.

*********