Impacts of Horizontal Resolution and Air–Sea Flux Parameterization on the Intensity and Structure of simulated Typhoon Haiyan (2013)

Abstract. This study investigates the impacts of horizontal resolution and surface flux formulas on typhoon intensity and structure simulations through the case study of the Super Typhoon Haiyan (2013). Three different sets of surface flux formulas in the Weather Research and Forecasting Model were tested using grid spacing of 1, 3, and 6 km. Both increased resolution and more reasonable surface flux formulas can improve typhoon intensity simulation, but their impacts on storm structures are different. A combination of decrease in momentum transfer coefficient and increase in enthalpy transfer coefficients has greater potential to yield stronger storm. This positive effect of more reasonable surface flux formulas can be efficiently enhanced when the grid spacing is appropriately reduced to yield intense and contracted eyewall structure. As resolution increases, the eyewall becomes more upright and contracted inward. The size of updraft cores in the eyewall shrinks and the region of downdraft increases; both updraft and downdraft become more intense. As a result, the enhanced convective cores within the eyewall are driven by more intense updrafts within a rather small fraction of spatial area. This contraction of eyewall is associated with an upper level warming process, which may be partly attributed to air detrained from the intense convective cores. This resolution dependence of spatial scale of updrafts is related to the model effective resolution as determined by grid spacing.