Status Status:Ongoing analysisFinalized Material from: Linus
Discussed in the following Daily reports:
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http://intra.ecmwf.int/daily/d/dreport/2015/03/16/sc/
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1. Impact
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The tropical cyclone Pam hit the Vanuatu Islands on 13 March 2015 with a devastating effect. The cyclone were the second strongest in the southern Pacific after Zoe (2002) and is believed to be the worst natural disaster on Vanuatu in history. |
The figure below shows the wind footprint of the cyclone (UCL/TSR wind field modelling using JTWC real-time track provided by Mark Saunders/UCL via Tropical-Cyclone mailing list). As the cyclone moved parallel to the band of Islands, a large part of the country was affected.
More sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Pam
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The plots below show ASCAT diagnostics (analysis and first guess vs. observations) for three assimilation cycles during the life-time of Pam. In the first example (from 9 March 12z), there are a cluster of vectors that got the wrong direction assign due to the position error in the first guess. The second example is an example (11 March 00z) of a good first guess which led to good usage of the vectors. In the third example (12 March 00z) many vectors were rejected due to the strong wind speeds.
3.2 HRES
The plot below shows all HRES forecast valid 13 March 00z. All forecasts have a cyclone in the area although the first four forecasts (initialised 3-6 March 00z) had a weak cyclone. The forecasts from 7-10 March had the cyclone somewhat too the east of the observed position.
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