Efficient and effective tropical cyclone eye fix using genetic algorithms

Abstract

Weather forecasting often requires extensive computationally expensive numerical analysis on remote sensing data. For example, to determine the position of a tropical cyclone (the TC eye fix problem), computationally intensive techniques, such as the analysis of wind fields or processing of fields of motion vectors, are needed. Given the volume and rate of data to be processed, these problems are often solved using mainframe computers or clusters of computers for timely results to be given. In this paper, a template matching method is proposed to solve a subclass of TC eye fix problems. Together with the use of genetic algorithm, an accuracy within 0.139 to 0.257 degrees in latitude/longitude on the Mercator projected map is possible on a desktop computer at a rate of about 12 seconds per 6 minutes of radar data. The accuracy is comparable to the relative error of about 0.3 degrees given by different TC warning centers. © Springer-Verlag 2004.