High-resolution simulation of Tropical Cyclone Debbie (2017):The current and future changes in the inner-core structure and evolution during offshore intensification.

Tropical Cyclone Debbie (2017) made landfall near Airlie Beach on 28 March 2017 causing 14 fatalities and an estimated US$2.67B economic loss and was ranked as the most dangerous cyclone to hit Australia since TC Tracy in 1974. In addition to the extreme flooding as TC Debbie moved onshore and down the east coast of Australia, it intensified rapidly just offshore from Category 2 to Category 4 in approximately 18 hours and finally made landfall as a Category 4 TC, causing widespread and disastrous damage.

 

A high-resolution WRF simulation (1-km horizontal, and 10-min temporal resolution) is used to analyze the inner-core structure and evolution during the offshore rapid intensification period in the current conditions and potential future change. In current condition, Debbie’s a rapid intensification (RI) stage is characterized by three rounds of eyewall breakdown into mesovortices and re-development events. Each round of breakdown and re-establishment brings high potential vorticity and equivalent potential temperature air back into the eyewall, re-invigorating eyewall convection activity and driving intensification. The potential future changes in the inner-core structure and eyewall evolution will also be discussed using WRF with the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) perturbed conditions to better assess the possible TC intensity change under different climate change scenarios.