Impact of different land use and land cover in simulation of tropical cyclones over Bay of Bengal

This study presents an assessment on the impact of different Land Use/Land Cover datasets in simulating the movement and severity of three extremely severe cyclonic storms, namely Phailin (2013), Hudhud (2014) and Fani (2019), which developed over the Bay of Bengal (BoB). For this purpose, the Advanced Research Weather and Forecasting System (WRF) is selected and the model is forced with necessary input parameters. Two sets of numerical experiment are conducted. The first set of experiments uses U.S. Geological Survey Land Use/Land Cover datasets, and the WRF model is integrated with four different land surface parameterization schemes. The second set of experiments uses the Indian satellite IRS P6 AWiFS-derived Land Use/Land Cover obtained from the National Remote Sensing Centre (here after; AWiFS), and WRF model is integrated with four different land surface parameterization schemes. The model simulated track, mean sea-level pressure, wind, and rainfall are analysed and verified with available observation as obtained from India Meteorological Department and NASA Global Precipitation Measurement. The dynamics and thermodynamic structure are analysed in terms of model simulated vorticity and equivalent potential temperature during the landfall of the system. The results suggested that the use of AWiFS Land Use/Land Cover improves the simulation of track of all the cyclones during and after the landfall of the system. Also, it significantly reduces the landfall point error for all the land surface parameterization schemes except with thermal diffusion scheme. The AWiFS experiments could simulate both the spatial and station rainfall reasonably well. Also, it could simulate the intensity and thermodynamic structure of the cyclone reasonably well.