A dynamical model for the study of tropical cyclone development.

Abstract

The development of a tropical cyclone is viewed as a cooperative process between the cloud-scale convection as the energy source and the cyclone-scale motion as the mechanism of organizing the cloud convection. In order to formulate the coupling between the two different scales of phenomena in terms of the large scale fields alone, it is hypothesized that the statistical distribution and mean intensity of the cloud convection are controlled by the large scale convergence of the warm and moist air in a surface layer, while the vertical transfer of heat and mass due to the clouds are determined from a hypothetical model of cloud convection itself. These hypotheses are incorporated into a fluid system which consists of two layers of incompressible homogeneous fluid of different densities and a boundary layer to represent the effect of surface friction separately.