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Super-typhoon Haiyan was the third category 5 typhoon to hit the Philippines since 2010. In 2010, Megi made landfall and resulted in 35 people dead and in 2012 Bupha resulted in 1901 dead. The tropical storm seasons in the north-western Pacific is one of the most active and Haiyan was cyclone number 3? and the fifth to made landfall on the Philippines (together with Rumbia, Nari, Utor and Krosa). After making landfall on the Philippines, the cyclone made landfall on the 11 November in southern China and Vietnam.
2. Description of the event
The cyclone formed on the 3 November. On the 6 November 00 UTC the cyclone first classified as a super-typhoon. Late on the 7 November the cyclone made landfall on southern Philippines. Just before (18 UTC) the wind speed was (estimated?) 195 mph.
From www.wunderground.comMODIS satellite image of Super Typhoon Haiyan taken at 4:25 UTC November 7, 2013. At the time, Haiyan was a Category 5 storm with top winds of 175 mph. The Philippines are visible at the left of the image, and the Caroline Islands at the lower right. Image credit: NASA. Copied from http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2572
3. Predictability
3.1 Data assimilation
The figure above shows forecasts of the minimum pressure from long-window 4dvar forecasts, initialised every 12 hour (6 and 18 UTC). In black the estimated (for the hurricane centre at JMA) minimum pressure is plotted. The 12-hour forecast is used as first guess for the next analysis. Especially for the analysis of 7 Nov 18 UTC, the minimum pressure in the analysis is much higher than in the first guess, although the estimate is much lower. The problem here could be that the increments in the data-assimilation is much more large scale that this feature.
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From the WGNE Intercomparison of Tropical Cyclone Track Forecasts, I (Linus) found the following diagnostics of tropical cyclone minimum pressure. The figures below shows scatter plots of observed vs. modelled pressure for the north-western Pactific for the season of 2010. The plots are for ECMWF, UKMO, NCEP and JMA.
For this period, ECMWF seems to have the strongest relation between the observed and modelled depth. The deepest observed typhoon here was Megi with a minimum pressure of less than 900 hPa.For the other centres, NCEP and UKMO have the worst underestimation of the pressure.
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