An observational study of the physical processes responsible for tropical cyclone motion.

Abstract

Analyses of the vorticity budget using both aircraft and rawindsonde composite data were performed. As expected, the results show a definite link between the local change in relative vorticity and tropical cyclone movement. The main contributor to this local change, at least in the middle troposphere, is the horizontal advection of absolute vorticity with the divergence term usually playing a secondary but not necessarily negligible role. The vertical advection and tilting terms are generally much smaller.-from Author