Coastal ocean conditions such as sea surface temperature and winds, may affect the sudden intensification and change the path of landfalling tropical cyclones. The animation is the movement of Hurricane Floyd simulated by a mesoscale model MM-5 initiated the scatterometer winds, produced in a study led by Shuyi S. Chen.

Movie in compressed avi format (size 121MB, warning: will take a long time to download)

Methodology is being developed to assimilate high-resolution scatterometer winds (see Section on Data System) into mesoscale non-hydrostatic atmospheric models (e.g. COAMPS and MM5) to produce coastal wind field.

Reference:
Chen, S.S., J. Tenerelli, R. Foster, and W. T. Liu, 2001: Impact of the QuikScat Data on Hurricane Prediction Models. IGARSS 2001,IEEE.