Celio Matuele and Shozo Yamane

The Mozambique Channel is located on the western side of South West Indian Ocean and is bordered on either side by Mozambique and Madagascar. Most of the population of Mozambique live along the coastline, and are exposed to strong winds, heavy rain, flooding and storm surge, when tropical cyclone approaches to the coast. On 13 February 2017, Dineo was generated in the Mozambique Channel, and reached category 1, moved southwestward, and landed in Inhambane province, Mozambique.

In this study, we analyzed the track and precipitation distribution of Dineo using THORPEX Interactive Grand Global Ensemble forecasts: mean sea level pressure and 6 and 12 hours accumulated precipitation from four operational forecasting centers (National Centers for Environmental Prediction, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, United Kingdom Met Office, and Japan Meteorological Agency) with horizontal resolution of 0.5 degree. The observed track images from La Reunion-Regional Specialized Meteorological Center, satellite data from Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation, and the local station data at Inhambane were also used.

The analyses from National Center for Environmental Prediction show acceptable results of position and track of Dineo. The precipitation distribution of European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts show more reliable results, however, a considerable shift in position of precipitation signal and an over-estimating value in amount of precipitation exist compared to the observation data.

The THORPEX Interactive Grand Global ensemble data show reliable results and are found to be very useful to analyze the tropical cyclones generated over Mozambique Channel.

KEY WORDS: Mozambique Channel; Tropical Cyclone; Precipitation; Global ensemble forecasts.