The Impacts of Assimilating Fengyun-4A Atmospheric Motion Vectors on Typhoon Forecasts

Abstract

Atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs), known as cloud track winds, have positive impacts on global numerical weather forecasts (NWP). In this study, AMVs retrieved from Fengyun-2G and Fengyun-4A are compared in their data quality and impacts on the typhoon forecasts in order to investigate the differences between the first and second generation of the geostationary meteorological satellites of China. This report conducted data evaluation and assimilation-forecasting experiments on FY-2G and FY-4A atmospheric motion vector (AMVs), respectively. The results show that the AMVs data of FY-4A are of better quality than those of FY-2G and assimilating the AMVs of FY-2G and FY-4A have a neutral to slightly positive impacts on typhoon forecasts, which is quite encouraging for the operational use in the future.