A BRIEF REVIEW OF PHYSICAL INITIALIZATION

This review presents a short summary of studies on physical initializa tion carried out at Florida State University. This summarizes the find ings in several areas such as: the formulation of physical initializat ion, impact (and skill) on the nowcasting and short range prediction o f rainfall, medium range prediction of typhoons, mesoscale structures implied by physical initialization, impact on the spread of an ensembl e of typhoon forecasts and the improvements of hydrological budget dur ing flooding events. References are provided in each section where fur ther details for each of these areas are presented.