Generalization of Zheng et al. (2019) AMV-based center-fixing to typical geostationary satellites

Determine whether the atmospheric-motion-vector-based center-fixing method of Zheng et al. (2019)—which locates a tropical cyclone center by minimizing the magnitude of the mean of direction vectors (MMDV) computed from AMVs derived from Gaofen-4 imagery—generalizes to typical geostationary satellites such as GOES ABI and Himawari AHI that have coarser spatial (approximately 0.5–2.0 km) and temporal (~10 min) resolution, by rigorously evaluating its center-location accuracy under these sensor characteristics.

Background

Zheng et al. (2019) compute atmospheric motion vectors from geostationary infrared imagery (Gaofen-4) and identify the cyclone center as the minimum of the magnitude of the mean of direction vectors (MMDV). The success of this approach may depend critically on the very high spatial and temporal resolution of Gaofen-4, which is atypical of most operational geostationary platforms.

Typical geostationary satellites used operationally for tropical cyclone analysis (e.g., GOES ABI, Himawari AHI) have substantially coarser resolution (10-minute cadence and 0.5–2.0 km pixels), raising uncertainty about whether AMV quality and the derived MMDV field will suffice for accurate center-fixing. Establishing generalizability would determine whether this method can be adopted more broadly across basins and satellites.