Abstract

Hurricane forecasting, along with weather forecasting in general, has only begun to develop successful methods for the prediction of future weather events in the past 30 years through the introduction of GOES satellites and numerical weather models. However, when compared with the great advancements made in hurricane track forecasting, hurricane intensity forecasting has greatly lagged in improvement in the past twenty years, mostly due to the complexity of the interaction of the above features that control hurricane intensity. The factors that affect the ability for tropical systems to rapidly intensify can be pared down into three main categories: atmospheric conditions, oceanic thermodynamics, and inner core characteristics of the tropical system. Within each of these main categories, there are individual characteristics such as wind shear, sea surface temperatures, and eyewall structure, most of which have been extensively analyzed (however, they are not always well understood in real-world applications). One of the less examined factors, storm size, is analyzed in this paper and found to have a notable effect on the potential for tropical systems to rapidly intensify. The goal in analyzing storm size is to try and improve upon a Rapid Intensification Index (RII) developed by leading hurricane researchers, by discussing the plausibility of adding storm size as a possible factor in the potential for rapid intensification.