Further applications of empirical orthogonal functions of wind fields from tropical cyclone motion studies

The synoptic differences in the environmental flow are demonstrated for cyclones having different initial directions and translation speeds. It is also shown that the wind-based EOF coefficients may be used to differentiate between future tracks of cyclones that have a similar initial direction of motion. Thus, the small sets of EOF coefficients that are used in statistical regression techniques for track prediction by Peak et al. have physical meaning and are not statistical artifacts. A new application of the EOF coefficients is to post-process the track predictions from the One-way influence Tropical Cyclone Model. The synoptic influences represented by the EOF coefficient can differentiate situations in which the dynamical model (OTCM) is likely to provide poor guidance. -from Authors