FY-3A SATELLITE MICROWAVE DATA ASSIMILATION EXPERIMENTS IN TROPICAL CYCLONE FORECAST

China's new generation of polar-orbiting meteorological satellite FY-3A was successfully launched on May 26, 2008, carrying microwave sounding devices which had similar performance to ATOVS of NOAA series. In order to study the application of microwave sounding data in numerical prediction of typhoons and to improve typhoon forecasting, we assimilated data directly for numerical forecasting of the track and intensity of the 2009 typhoon Morakot (0908) based on the WRF-3DVar system. Results showed that the initial fields of the numerical model due to direct assimilation of FY-3A microwave sounding data was improved much more than that due to assimilation of conventional observations alone, and the improvement was especially significant over the ocean, which is always without conventional observations. The model initial fields were more reasonable in reflecting the initial situation of typhoon circulation as well as temperature and humidity conditions, and typhoon central position at sea was also adjusted. Through direct 3DVar assimilation of FY-3A microwave data, the regional mesoscale model improves the forecasting of typhoon track. Therefore, the FY-3A microwave data could efficiently improve the numerical prediction of typhoons.