Insights from Super Typhoon Mangkhut (1822) for wind engineering practices

Abstract The majority of existing studies on tropical cyclone (TC) in the wind engineering community concerned merely with wind structures in a considerably shallow portion of TC’s depth, while wind characteristics in TC’s middle and upper portions and the structural features of other weather elements (e.g., temperature, pressure and humidity) have been less investigated. As a result, there is a lack of understanding of TCs from a global and comprehensive perspective. This paper presents a comprehensive case study on super typhoon Mangkhut (1822) which is one of the strongest TCs impacted south coastal region of China. A set of valuable database from various devices, i.e., weather satellites, radiosonde balloons, wind profilers and ground-based weather masts, are analyzed and discussed, which covers the entire TC depth. Some interesting phenomena are explored, including concentric eyewalls, secondary circulation, warm core and axial-asymmetry of pressure field. A spatial model is proposed to quantify both the axial-asymmetric and height-varying features of Mangkhut’s pressure field. Low-level-jet (LLJ) features of mean wind profiles and topographic/terrain effects on wind measurements at near-ground level are stressed. This study aims to provide useful information and insights to better understand TCs’ inner structures around landfall and to facilitate TC-risk assessment and anti-TC practices.