Tropical cyclone center location with digital image process

The location of tropical cyclone is always an important and difficult problem. Satellite digital photograph makes it possible to implement image process technology in this field. Using image process technology, it is possible to apply new method based on the feature of digital picture which was useless in human based center location method. In this paper, we advance a new system to locate the typhoon center based on the satellite photograph. After pre-processing, we put forward several center location technologies based on tropical cyclone´s structure, the whirl and the whole movement. According to the tropical cyclone´s symmetry shape and its spire movement feature, we use some logarithmic helix to fit part of the cyclone feature cloud and the center of the helix is the center of the cyclone; according to its movement feature, we advance a rotation matching method, the rotation center point is the typhoon center. The system is now in tryout in Shanghai Weather Broadcast Central. Practices show the system is effective and the error is quite acceptable