atmosphere Article Radial Distributions of Sea Surface Temperature and Their Impacts on the Rapid Intensification of Typhoon Hato (2017) Ze Zhang 1, , Weimin Zhang 1,2,*, Wenjing Zhao 1 and Chengwu Zhao 1 1 College of Meteorology and Oceanography, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China;
[email protected] (Z.Z.);
[email protected] (W.Z.);
[email protected] (C.Z.) 2 Key Laboratory of Software Engineering for Complex Systems, Changsha 410073, China * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +86-0731-8702-1601 Received: 30 December 2019; Accepted: 20 January 2020; Published: 23 January 2020 Abstract: As a category-3 typhoon, Hato (2017) experienced the notable rapid intensification (RI) over the hot sea surface before its landfall. The RI process and the influences of local sea surface temperature (SST) patterns on the evolution of Hato were well captured and carefully investigated using a high-resolution air–sea coupled model. To further explore the close relationship between the radial distributions of SST and storm evolution, a sensitive experiment with time-fixed SST was also performed. Results showed that the time-fixed SST experiment produced earlier RI following the rapid core structure adjustment, as higher SST in the core region was found favorable to increasing the near-surface water vapor and latent heat flux. Strong updrafts were thus facilitated inside the eyewall, inducing the eyewall contraction and RI of the storm. In contrast, cooler SST inside the core region should account for the delay of RI as the intense convection located in the outer rainbands, inhibiting the transportation of energy into the inner-core.