Published works

Wind hazard and rainfall models were coupled to estimate hourly open exposure maximum three-second gust wind speeds and rainfall totals for Tropical Cyclone (TC) Marcia (2015) using Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) best track data. Yeppoon The Esplanade automatic weather station (AWS) was used to perform a verification of the simulated hourly open exposure maximum three-second gust wind speed and rainfall totals with observed estimates. Preliminary verification results reveal that the wind hazard model overestimates the AWS hourly maximum three-second gust wind speed and the rainfall model underestimates the hourly total rainfall. Ensemble prediction system (EPS) forecasts from the European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts (ECMWF) were examined to determine their utility in simulating TC Marcia’s wind and rainfall fields and impacts. The ECMWF EPS fails to capture Marcia’s rapid intensification at 72, 48, and 24 hours leading up to the landfall. A time-varying calibration factor is required at each forecast initialization in order to adjust each ensemble forecast member’s minimum central pressure to a more realistic estimate of the minimum central pressure to properly simulate impacts to humans and the built environment.