Experiments With a Self-Adaptive Multigrid Barotropic Tropical Cyclone Track Model

Accurate prediction of hurricane tracks may require resolving the flow both within and around the storm. Since the spatial scales in these two regions differ substantially, uniform resolution is inherently inefficient the grid should be refined only near the storm. This paper describes the performance of a barotropic model with an adaptive multi-grid scheme which automatically refines the mesh around the storm as it moves. The model is formulatedl on a section of the sphere using a Mercator projection. The model consists of a modified barotropic vorticity equation.