An Analytical Theory for the Early Stage of the Development of Hurricanes: Part II

TL;DR

This paper refines an analytical nonlinear theory of early hurricane development by removing discontinuities and incorporating frictional effects, providing more realistic insights into tropical storm dynamics.

Contribution

It improves the nonlinear hurricane development model by eliminating wind discontinuities and analyzing the impact of frictional effects.

Findings

Discontinuity in tangential wind and geopotential is satisfactorily removed.

Frictional effects significantly influence hurricane development.

The refined model aligns better with observed tropical storm behavior.

Abstract

In this series of papers, an analytical theory for the early stage (tropical storm stage) of hurricane development is proposed. In Part I, a linear theory and a nonlinear theory have been formulated. It was found in Part I that the linear theory, a kind of the 2D Rankine vortex, gives some unrealistic properties for hurricane development at the upper half of the atmosphere. In the nonlinear theory, the analytical solutions agree well in many dynamical respects with observations at the tropical stage of hurricane development. Particularly, these solutions offer new insights which have not been shown before. However, this nonlinear theory has a disturbing point: a discontinuity of tangential wind and geopotential with radius. In this second Part, this discontinuity will be eliminated satisfactorily without any significant changes to the results obtained in Part I. In addition, the frictional effects will be investigated, which has not been done considered in Part I.