TROPICAL CYCLONE WIND FIELD DETERMINATION CHALLENGES AND POSSIBILITIES

The difficulties encountered in trying to determine the intensity of any landfalling tropical cyclone are reviewed. These difficulties are then related to the complexities observed during the landfall of Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry (2006), and possible wind speed samplinu deficiencies and biases are considered for that event. Recent and expected advances in knowledge of storm structure and wind speed estimation methods suggest a need for increased documentation requirements, so that the various assumptions employed in estimating landfall intensity can subsequently be improved upon, Increases in documentary requirements may also improve the error hound determination of intensity estimates of individual events, and thus ultimately the climate record as well.