Super Typhoon Mangkhut's wind behavior revealed, impacting future storm predictions.
The study looked at how wind and turbulence change during a tropical cyclone hitting land. They used towers to measure wind at different heights during Super Typhoon Mangkhut in 2018. They found that the wind behaves like a log profile outside the storm's center, with the height of this layer increasing with wind speed. Turbulence and wind energy also increase with wind speed at all levels. The drag coefficient and roughness length at the tower location stay the same regardless of wind speed. Eddy diffusivity is higher over land than over the ocean at the same wind speed.