A New Satellite-Based Indicator for Estimation of the Western North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Current Intensity

A technique to estimate tropical cyclone (TC) current intensity based on geostationary satellite infrared window (IRW) and water vapor (WV) imagery is explored in this paper. First, to combine the advantages of the IRW imagery and the WV minus IRW (WV-IRW) imagery, a WV-IRW-to-IRW ratio (WIRa)-based indicator is proposed. This indicator not only can display the inner-core convection's symmetrization level and vigor but also is able to screen out thin cirrus, stratospheric WV anomaly, and overshooting tops from average deep convection. It is highly correlated with the best track minimum sea-level pressure and thus used to estimate the western North Pacific TC current intensity. Detailed analyses have demonstrated that the WIRa-based indicator can further improve the estimation of TC current intensity alongside the existing algorithms. The WIRa-based indicator is designed based on the hypothesis that “overshooting top is more useful for forecasting than initial estimation,” and the satisfying results of the WIRa-based method perhaps provide indirect evidence to support this hypothesis in turn.