The Impact of Dropsonde Data on Forecasts of Hurricane Debby by the Meteorological Office Unified Model

The numerical product of hurricane tracks vastly depends on initial observation fields. However, the forecast error is very large because of lack of observational data, especially when hurricanes are over the sea.This paper shows that extra non-real-time data (dropsonde data) can improve hurricane track forecasts compared with real-time observational data, and that the wind and relative humidity components of the dropsonde data have the greatest impact on the track forecasts.