Assessment of the Doppler Radar for Airport Weather (DRAW) System in Japan as a Research Tool for Studying Typhoon

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the usefulness of the Doppler Radar for Airport Weather (DRAW) system as a research tool for studying typhoon. I particularly aim at assessing opportunity for detecting typhoon inner core circulations and precipitations with the DRAW. For centers of typhoons, which correspond to positions of the inner cores, it is estimated that 322 hours of data (61cases) had been collected with the eight DRAWs over past 30 typhoons (1995-2005). On average, about one typhoon will be observed with each DRAW site. The Naha DRAW (the southernmost DRAW site) will provide the most frequent observations and each observed center would remain in radar range for periods between 4 and 11 hours. In this study, it is shown that many typhoon inner core cases will be collected with DRAW and suggested new opportunities for further research and development these phenomena. DRAWs will play an increasing role to understand detailed typhoon structures and life cycles (e.g., polygonal eyewall, mesovorticies, landfall processes, and asymmetric structure), and in the future, to improve typhoon intensity forecasts.