Physical Mechanisms Responsible for Track Changes and Rainfall Distributions Associated with Tropical Cyclone Landfall

As a tropical cyclone approaches land, its interaction with the characteristics of the land (surface roughness, topography, moisture availability, etc.) will lead to changes in its track as well as the rainfall and wind distributions near its landfall location. Accurate predictions of such changes are important in issuing warnings and disaster preparedness. In this chapter, the basic physical mechanisms that cause changes in the track and rainfall distributions when a tropical cyclone is about to make landfall are presented. These mechanisms are derived based on studies from both observations and idealized simulations. While the latter are relatively simple, they can isolate the fundamental and underlying physical processes that are inherent when an interaction between the land and the tropical cyclone circulation takes place. These processes are important in assessing the performance of the forecast models, and hence could help improve the model predictions and subsequently disaster preparedness.