A New Framework for Evaluating Model Simulated Inland Tropical Cyclone Wind Fields

Though tropical cyclone (TC) models have been routinely evaluated against track and intensity observations, little work has been performed to validate modeled TC wind fields over land. In this paper, we present a simple framework for evaluating simulated low-level inland winds with in-situ observations and existing TC structure theory. The Automated Surface Observing Systems, Florida Coastal Monitoring Program, and best track data are used to generate a theory-predicted wind profile that reasonably represents the observed radial distribution of TC wind speeds. We quantitatively and qualitatively evaluated the modeled inland TC wind fields, and described the model performance with a set of simple indicators. The framework was used to examine the performance of a high-resolution two-way nested Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory model on recent U.S. landfalling TCs. Results demonstrate the capacity of using this framework to assess the modeled TC low-level wind field in the absence of dense inland observations.