Application of HY-2A/SCAT sea surface winds in understanding structure of typhoons over Northwestern Pacific Ocean

The viability of Chinese HY-2A scatterometer in monitoring and studying typhoons is discussed in this paper by investigating 67 typhoon cases over the Northwestern Pacific Ocean from 2012–2014. A typhoon center detection algorithm based on the product of the divergence and vorticity of the wind vector field is presented, and the detected typhoon center positions show good agreement with the vortex wind structures. The typhoon intensity is estimated from the sea surface winds and validated against the JTWC best-track records. Results demonstrate that the HY-2A scatterometer could provide reference in intensity estimation for weak typhoons. With the typhoon center extracted, the radial and tangential winds are estimated and discussed, and the inter-relationships between typhoon size and intensity, strength, center latitude and et al. are investigated. Furthermore, the temporal and spatial distribution of size are discussed. In summary, this study indicates that the HY-2A scatterometer observed sea surface winds could be taken as a reliable data source for typhoon monitoring, and could be used profoundly in related studies.