Eyewall rainfall patterns from aircraft lower fuselage radar images

Abstract

Airborne radar serves as the premier source of rainfall data for tropical cyclones over the open ocean. The eyewall is of particular interest due to the high impact of the conditions associated with this feature. Airborne data from missions into TCs can illustrate rainfall features in eyewalls. Therefore, this study selected and analyzed images that best captured eyewalls from the last two decades. The study developed a scheme to quantitatively analyze the eyewall. The eyewall features examined included the eye area, maximum eye diameter, eye roundness, eyewall area, eyewall completeness, maximum eyewall width, maximum reflectivity value and location, number of local reflectivity maxima, and eyewall mean rainrate. These variables were compared to TC intensity and motion characteristics from the Best Track dataset and the environmental characteristics from the SHIPS dataset.