An objective method of cyclone centre determination from geostationary satellite observations

Abstract

An objective method has been developed for finding the centre of a cyclone using thermal infrared (TIR) image data from geostationary satellites. The data from the Meteosat-5 TIR channel have been analysed to demonstrate the utility of the method. The minimization approach has been used to determine the centre with the assumption of a near elliptic structure in the surrounding of the central dense overcast (CDO) region of a cyclone. The ellipse fitting technique is able to estimate objectively the centre for more than 70% cases with an error of less than 50 km.