We are developing a high-fidelity method for simulating the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones (TCs), also known as hurricanes. A significant challenge in identifying and predicting the rapid intensification of TCs is the computational cost. To address this challenge, our strategy is twofold: (1) leverage GPU acceleration and (2) develop a multiscale modeling framework. The main objective is to develop an efficient numerical method to capture this complex and hazardous phenomenon.
The above movies show preliminary simulations of the dry dynamics of a tropical cyclone over a period of 6 hours. (The domain is vertically stretched by a factor of 10 in the movies.) We see high velocities in the core and rotating winds in the surrounding areas. The flow is initiated by idealized vortices and forced by heating observed in Hurricane Guillermo (1997). The governing equations are the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, with observational data incorporated into the heat source. The domain is discretized spatially using 5th-order basis functions and temporally using an implicit-explicit method.
Soonpil Kang 