An Improved Conversion Relationship between Tropical Cyclone Intensity Index and Maximum Wind Speed for the Advanced Dvorak Technique in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean Using SMAP Data

The Advanced Dvorak Technique (ADT) uses geostationary satellite data to estimate tropical cyclone (TC) intensity owing to the difficulty in directly observing a TC’s internal structure. This study presents a new relationship (Hong and Ryu scale) between the current intensity (CI) number and estimated maximum wind speed (MWS) of TCs over the northwestern Pacific region; the CI number is the TC intensity index retrieved from the ADT. The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) with the L-band (1.4 GHz) microwave radiometer, is used to calibrate and produce the new Hong and Ryu scale for the ADT algorithm. Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) best track MWS data, SMAP sea surface wind speed estimates, and ADT’s TC intensity data between 2015–2018 are spatiotemporally collocated for the calibration process. The CI number is derived from the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) operational ADT which uses the Koba scale to convert to the MWS for validation against the MWS of the best track. The conversion relationships between CI number and SMAP MWS, and between SMAP MWS and MWS of the best track a derived, and the MWS of two ADTs with the Koba and Hong and Ryu scales are then estimated using the same CI numbers with TC intensity data between 2015–2018. Finally, the MWS of the ADT with the Koba scale and the new ADT with the proposed Hong and Ryu scale are independently validated on best track data from 2013–2014. The MWS root mean square error (RMSE) is 4.39 m/s for the new ADT using the Hong and Ryu scale, which is lower than 4.77 m/s RMSE of the ADT using the Koba scale. Hence, the ADT using the Hong and Ryu scale can modestly improve the accuracy of TC intensity analysis in the northwestern Pacific region.