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June 15, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110607102626.htm | Wild winds: Changes in weather patterns creating more severe storms | A Kansas State University climate expert attributes the increase in the number and severity of tornadoes and severe storms in 2011 to a change in weather patterns. | John Harrington Jr., professor of geography, is a synoptic climatologist who examines the factors behind distinctive weather events. He credits the increased tornado production this year to jet stream patterns in the upper atmosphere. The patterns have created synoptic events such as the April tornado outbreak in Alabama and recent tornado in Joplin, Mo. While these events are not unprecedented, they are significant, he said."To put them in all in one year, that's what has people talking about this stuff," Harrington said. "The fact that this is happening all in one year and in a relatively short time frame is unusual."Special circumstances are necessary for the creation of tornadoes in the Great Plains, Harrington said. A humid atmosphere with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the right jet stream pattern coupled with surface convergence help to spawn a thunderstorm. Uplift from the jet stream helps to create the towering clouds associated with severe thunderstorms. Add a wind pattern set up with air filtering into the storm from the south at low levels, from the southwest at mid-levels and the northwest at higher levels, rotation of the thunderstorm cloud begins and its possible for a tornado to form."Unfortunately in terms of death and destruction, we've had too many of those events this year," Harrington said.Forecasting tornadoes far ahead of time differs from the more advanced hurricane and weather prediction methods. The National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center does not predict tornadoes, rather it attempts to predict jet stream patterns a month or so in the future.In the wintertime the jet stream tends to flow above the southern United States. It migrates northward by the summertime. The area receiving the most tornadoes tends to shift with jet stream location as well. Oklahoma usually has a higher frequency of tornadoes in April, while Kansas experiences most of its tornadoes in May, Harrington said.Synoptic patterns are different in autumn as the jet stream migrates back south, with much drier air across much of the U.S. While this does not preclude fall tornadoes from occurring, they are rare events. Connecting the surface conditions with the jet stream flow pattern helps a weather forecaster understand the likelihood for severe storms."That's pretty important in terms of understanding the kind of environment that will produce the necessary thunderstorms that rotate," Harrington said.Extreme examples of weather have not been isolated to tornadoes. Heat waves, blizzards and severe storms have been increasingly more frequent or more severe according to U.S. data, Harrington said. These changes can be attributed to changes in the climate system.The increase in severe weather events is drawing attention, he said."We have these good historical precedents for specific synoptic events, but they're starting to come more frequently together. That's what is very interesting, is that this weather system seems to be getting more variable." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
June 4, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110603102740.htm | Helping the aged during natural disasters | When earthquake, tsunami, tornado or flood strike, among the most vulnerable group are the elderly. Writing in the | Robyn Tuohy and Christine Stephens of Massey University in Palmerston North, point out that elderly citizens are likely to experience the negative impacts of floods and other natural disasters partly because of age-related disabilities but also because of social circumstances, such as isolation. The team has explored the issues surrounding such vulnerability based on case studies of older adults who experienced a flood disaster and compared those experiences among those living in a rest home or independently in the community.Vulnerability is defined as the ability of a person or group to pre-empt, cope with and recover from a natural disaster, the team explains, determining who is most at risk should ensure better outcomes. Previous studies have suggested that vulnerability is affected by class, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status (SES) and age, it is also determined to some extent by the type of disaster that occurs. Tuohy and Stephens add that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified older adults as a vulnerable population who are more likely to experience greater risks and adversity than others in any disaster.The implications are supported by recent evidence. For instance, research following Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, revealed disproportionately poorer outcomes for older adults compared to other population groups, the Indonesian tsunami of 2004 saw the highest death rates among the over-sixties; deaths during the 2003 Paris heat wave killed more people over 70 years than any other group; and more than half of all casualties in the 1995 Kobe earthquake were older adults, with 90% of deaths in this group.An important aspect of how demographics are developing, the team adds, is that the population is aging so that there is a greater proportion of people over 65 years in many countries. Although many older adults will be cared for in a rest home environment, a greater proportion will be self-reliant and living independently in the community, the team adds. Demographic projections suggest that there will be an almost threefold increase in the global population over 65 within the next half century."In a disaster situation, the interaction of personal and social vulnerability will influence the ability of older adults to prepare, respond to and recover from such an event. A disaster will amplify both personal and social challenges facing older adults, and as a result older adults become more vulnerable to experiencing negative outcomes during disasters," the team says. "Emergency preparedness planning must take into account the age-related needs of older adults." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
May 25, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110525112115.htm | NASA's TRMM satellite saw heavy rainfall in supercell that spawned Joplin, Missouri tornado | On Sunday, May 22, 2011, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite captured an image of the rainfall rate in the supercell thunderstorm that generated the deadly twister that struck Joplin, Missouri. | TRMM is a satellite that is managed by both NASA and the Japanese Space Agency, and monitors rainfall rates in the tropics. It's often used for hurricane research, but also calculates rain rates in other weather systems. On May 22 at 2042 UTC (3:42 p.m. CDT), about two hours before the deadly tornado touched down in Joplin, Missouri, TRMM captured rainfall rates in a supercell thunderstorm that was approaching Joplin from the west. A supercell, also known as a rotating thunderstorm, is a thunderstorm with a deep, continuously-rotating updraft."This supercell contained a deadly tornado as it moved into southwestern Missouri a few hours later and hit Joplin, Missouri," said Hal Pierce, meteorologist on NASA's TRMM team who created images using TRMM rainfall imagery. TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) were used to create images that showed an analysis of rainfall in the vicinity of the storm. TRMM data revealed a large area of heavy rainfall, where rainfall rates were more than 2 inches (50 millimeters) per hour.Two hours after the TRMM satellite captured that heavy rainfall, the tornado touched down in Joplin with winds up to 198 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service. As of May 25, 125 people were reported killed, making the twister the most deadly in the U.S. in over 60 years.Southwestern Missouri can't get a break from the severe weather as the recovery efforts continued. The National Weather Service (NWS) in southwestern Missouri noted that "Multiple rounds of thunderstorms are expected over the region from this evening through at least Wednesday morning." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
May 18, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110517110321.htm | Landslides: How rainfall dried up Panama's drinking water | An aerial survey of landslides has helps scientists evaluate the effect of a prolonged tropical storm on the water supply in the Panama Canal watershed. To understand the long-term effects of a prolonged tropical storm in the Panama Canal watershed, Robert Stallard, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and research hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, and Armando Ubeda, the LightHawk Mesoamerica program manager, organized four flights over the watershed to create a digital map of landslide scars. | Two feet of heavy rain inundated the Panama Canal watershed between Dec. 7 and 10, 2010. Landslides tore down steep slopes, choking rivers with sediment and overwhelming Panama City's water-treatment plant. Flooding closed the Panama Canal for the first time since 1935. Despite the deluge, the influx of sediments in the water forced authorities to shut down the plant, leaving a million residents of central Panama without clean drinking water for nearly a month.LightHawk, a conservation organization based in the U.S., donates flights for research and conservation efforts. Retired United Airlines captain David Cole flew the Cessna 206 aircraft, and the four flights yielded images of 191 square miles (495 square kilometers) of watershed. Stallard observed numerous new landslide scars left behind by the December storm, supporting his prediction that landslides supplied much of the suspended sediment that disrupted Panama's water supply.The new watershed erosion map will allow Stallard and collaborators from the Panama Canal Authority to calculate the landslide risk of future storms and direct strategies to minimize the effect on Panama's water supply.Tropical hydrologists agree that river-borne sediment originates from surface erosion or from deep erosion from landslides. In 1985, Stallard predicted that "deep erosion, not shallow surface erosion, is the primary process controlling the chemistry and sediment levels in many tropical rivers that pass through mountainous areas." Few studies have been conducted to test this prediction.Deforestation of steep slopes is the primary factor determining the number of landslides. Six decades of aerial photographs analyzed by USGS researchers in similar landscapes in Puerto Rico showed that landslide frequency doubles outside protected nature preserves, and that roads and infrastructure make landslides eight times more likely. Although landslides happen in natural forests, the objective is to limit their impact through appropriate land-use practices."With development, landslide intensity increases dramatically," said Stallard. "In its history, the Panama Canal watershed has experienced huge floods. It's still hard to say whether future floods will be accompanied by disastrous landslides like those produced by Hurricane Mitch in Central America." In 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept across Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador causing more than 10,000 deaths and incalculable economic damage. Panama's proximity to the equator puts the country outside the usual hurricane zone, but prolonged tropical storms may occur.Erosion control is possible. Partnering with the Panama Canal Authority and Panama's Environmental Authority, the Smithsonian is conducting a 700 hectare experiment in the canal watershed funded by the HSBC Climate Partnership to compare the effects of land-use choices, such as cattle ranching or reforestation with native tree species on water supply, carbon storage and biodiversity. Stallard hopes that this research will provide new information about which land uses provide a steady supply of clean water for the Canal.With the first rains in May, the eight-month wet season begins anew in central Panama. Drinking water flows freely, the rivers are clear and the Panama Canal is open for business. But bare slopes of past landslides continue to create secondary erosion, which will dislodge sediments from the steep, rainy and rugged Panama Canal watershed in 2011. The long-term effects of the 2010 storm may continue as renewed interruptions in the water supply in 2011. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
May 16, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110516111700.htm | Seaports need a plan for weathering climate change, researchers say | The majority of seaports around the world are unprepared for the potentially damaging impacts of climate change in the coming century, according to a new Stanford University study. | In a survey posed to port authorities around the world, the Stanford team found that most officials are unsure how best to protect their facilities from rising sea levels and more frequent Katrina-magnitude storms, which scientists say could be a consequence of global warming. Results from the survey are published in the journal "Part of the problem is that science says that by 2100, we'll experience anywhere from 1.5 to 6 feet of sea level rise," said the study's lead author, Austin Becker, a graduate student at Stanford. "That's a huge range."Port authorities, like many government agencies and private companies, have to make tough financial decisions when it comes to funding infrastructure, he said. They need accurate information from scientists about what to expect, so that they can plan accordingly. Building a structure to withstand a 6-foot sea level rise would cost much more than trying to accommodate a 1.5-foot rise, said Becker, a doctoral candidate in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford.In 2009, Becker distributed 160 surveys to members of the International Association of Ports and Harbors and the American Association of Port Authorities -- the first worldwide survey of port authorities to address climate change adaptation. A total of 93 agencies representing major seaports on every continent, except Antarctica, responded. The majority of respondents ranked sea level rise and increased storm events associated with climate change high on their list of concerns. However, only 6 percent said that they intend to build hurricane barriers within the next 10 years, and fewer than 18 percent had plans to build dikes or other storm protection structures."As we saw with Katrina in 2005, storm and flood damage can devastate a regional economy for years after an event and have national impacts," said Becker. Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane, caused an estimated $1.7 billion of damage to Louisiana ports. This month, the region is bracing for flood damage once again, as the National Weather Service is predicting that the Mississippi River could crest in New Orleans on May 23.And with scientists forecasting a doubling of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean by 2100, it seems all the more imperative to start thinking about adapting port infrastructures now, he said.Threat of violent stormsSea level rise and more frequent violent storms resulting from climate change threaten to take a tremendous toll on all types of infrastructure -- especially along the coasts, said study co-author Martin Fischer, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Center for Integrated Facility Engineering at Stanford.Fischer, Becker and a group of Stanford engineers are developing computer models to help port authorities and other government agencies make more informed decisions about adapting to climate change as they plan for the next generation of infrastructure. The group meets weekly at a seminar that focuses on engineering and policy for a sustainable future. "Look around at any seaport today and you will see structures that were built 100 years ago," said Fischer. "And the buildings that we are building today will be around when sea level rise begins to reshape the coast."The problem on a global scale, he said, is that ports may start scrambling all at once to adapt their structures to changing environmental conditions. "It could potentially exceed our capacity for construction worldwide," he added.Fischer and his colleagues have developed a model that demonstrates how a rapid, simultaneous push to fortify the world's seaports could drive up demand for construction materials and equipment. The model, called Sebastian, uses a Google Earth platform to simulate the costs and time required for building dikes around 200 of the world's most active seaports. Sebastian knows the shape of the ocean floor at each location and tailors the structure to each site to produce an estimate of the materials, labor and equipment that would be needed to fortify the port against sea level rise."Sebastian allows us to run different scenarios based on different levels of sea rise, and see how the ports are affected," said Fischer. Using criteria in the Army Corps of Engineers manual, the model calculates the resources needed for each variation of the structure. It's a way to calculate big-picture, worldwide demand, Fischer said, but it also gives managers more reliable information about how much survivability they are buying when they invest in different types of protective structures.Lack of oversightAnother difficult challenge in preparing for climate change at seaports is that no single agency or individual has sole authority over any given port, according to Becker. Some ports are privately owned, some are public and some are a mixture of both. And a broad range of entities -- from transportation companies to insurance companies to the Environmental Protection Agency -- have some stake in how they are managed. The arrangement greatly complicates ports' efforts to budget and plan for the future, according to the study.But plan they must, said Fischer."By the end of the century, quite a few ports will be in trouble, even if you are using the most conservative estimates for sea level rise," he said. "And if you use the estimates at the top of the range, all of them will be in trouble."Other co-authors of the study are Satoshi Inoue of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo and Ben Schwegler, a consulting professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and chief scientist at Walt Disney Imagineering.The research was funded by a planning grant from the Sustainable Built Environment Initiative at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford. Additional funding was provided by a McGee grant from the Stanford School of Earth Sciences. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
April 21, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110420152102.htm | Ring around the hurricanes: Satellites can predict storm intensity | Coastal residents and oil-rig workers may soon have longer warning when a storm headed in their direction is becoming a hurricane, thanks to a University of Illinois study demonstrating how to use existing satellites to monitor tropical storm dynamics and predict sudden surges in strength. | "It's a really critical piece of information that's really going to help society in coastal areas, not only in the U.S., but also globally," said atmospheric sciences professor Stephen Nesbitt. Nesbitt and graduate student Daniel Harnos published their findings in the journal Meteorologists have seen large advances in forecasting technology to track the potential path of tropical storms and hurricanes, but they've had little success in predicting storm intensity. One of the biggest forecast problems facing the tropical meteorology community is determining rapid intensification, when storms suddenly transform into much stronger cyclones or hurricanes."Rapid intensification means a moderate-strength tropical storm, something that may affect a region but not have a severe impact, blowing up in less than 24 hours to a category 2 or 3 hurricane," Harnos said. "This big, strong storm appears that wasn't anticipated, and the effects are going to be very negative. If you don't have the evacuations in place, people can't prepare for something of the magnitude that's going to come ashore."For example, Hurricane Charlie, which hit southern Florida in 2004, was initially forecast as a category 1 storm. However, when it made landfall less than 24 hours later, it had strengthened to a category 4, causing major damage.Rapid intensification is so hard to predict in part because it's driven by internal processes within the storm system, rather than the better-predicted, large-scale winds that determine the direction of the storms. The satellite imagery most commonly used for meteorology only looks at the clouds at the top of the storms, giving little insight as to what's going on inside the system.Harnos and Nesbitt focused their study on passive microwave satellite imagery. Such satellites are used commonly for estimating precipitation, surface temperature and other data. The Illinois researchers were the first to use them systematically to observe hurricane structure and intensity changes."What makes it ideal for what we are doing is that it's transparent to clouds. It senses the amount of ice within the clouds, which tells us the strength of convection or the overturn of the atmosphere within the hurricane," Nesbitt said. "It's somewhat like trying to diagnose somebody with a broken arm by taking a picture of the arm, versus being able to X-ray it."The researchers scoured data from passive microwave satellites from 1987 to 2008 to see how hurricanes behaved in the 24 hours before a storm underwent rapid intensification. Such a big-picture approach, in contrast to the case studies atmospheric scientists often perform, revealed clear patterns in storm dynamics. They found that, consistently, low-shear storm systems formed a symmetrical ring of thunderstorms around the center of the system about six hours before intensification began. As the system strengthened into a hurricane, the thunderstorms deepened and the ring became even more well-defined.The study also looked at high-shear storms, a less common phenomenon involving atmospheric winds hanging with height.Such storms showed a different structure when intensifying: They form a large, bull's-eye thunderstorm in the center of the system, rather than a ring around the center."Now we have an observational tool that uses existing data that can set off a red flag for forecasters, so that when they see this convective ring feature, there's a high probability that a storm may undergo rapid intensification," Nesbitt said. "This is really the first way that we can do this in real time rather than guessing with models or statistical predictions."Since passive microwave satellites orbit every three to six hours, meteorologists can use them to track tropical storms and watch for the telltale rings to give forecasters about a 30-hour window before a storm hits its maximum strength.Next, the researchers hope to even further increase their forecasting ability by modeling the internal dynamics of the storm systems as they intensify to pinpoint the causes of the structural changes they observed and find out what drives the intensification process."The satellite gives up as snapshot of what's taking place," Harnos said. "We know what's going on, but not how those changes are occurring to end up in the pattern that we're seeing. So what we're working on now is some computer modeling of hurricanes, both real storms and idealized storms, to see dynamically, structurally, what's taking place and what changes are occurring to produce these patterns that we see in the satellite data."The NASA Hurricane Science Research Program supported this work. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
April 18, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110414131851.htm | Carbon sequestration estimate in US increased, barring a drought | A research group has concluded that forests and other terrestrial ecosystems in the lower 48 states can sequester up to 40 percent of the nation's fossil fuel carbon emissions, a larger amount than previously estimated -- unless a drought or other major disturbance occurs. | Widespread droughts, such as those that occurred in 2002 and 2006, can cut the amount of carbon sequestered by about 20 percent, the scientists concluded in a recent study that was supported by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy.The research group -- led by Dr. Jingfeng Xiao, a research assistant professor at the Complex Systems Research Center, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire -- included scientists from 35 institutions. Their results, published in the journal "With this data it appears that our forests and other vegetation can sequester as much as 40 percent of the carbon emissions in the lower 48 states," said Beverly Law, a co-author of the study, professor in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University, and science team chair of the AmeriFlux network."That's substantially higher than some previous estimates, which indicated these ecosystems could take up the equivalent of only about 30 percent of emissions or less," Law said. "There's still some uncertainty in these data, but it does appear that the terrestrial carbon sink is higher than believed in earlier studies."However, the scientists cautioned that major disturbances, such as droughts, wildfires and hurricanes, can all affect the amount of carbon sequestered in a given year. Large droughts that happened twice in the U.S. in the past decade reduced the carbon sink about 20 percent, compared to a normal year."With climate change, we may get more extreme or frequent weather events in the future than we had before," Law said. "About half of the United States was affected by the major droughts in 2002 and 2006, which were unusually severe in their spatial extent and severity. And we're now learning that this can have significant effects on the amount of carbon sequestered in a given year."Carbon dioxide, when released by the burning of fossil fuels, forest fires, or other activities, is a major "greenhouse gas" and factor in global warming. But vegetation, mostly in the form of growing evergreen and deciduous forests, can play an important role in absorbing some of the excess carbon dioxide.Such information is important to understand global climate issues and develop policies, the researchers noted. This study examined the carbon budget in the U.S. from 2001 to 2006. Also playing a key role in the analysis was the PRISM climate database at OSU, a sophisticated system to monitor weather on a very localized and specific basis.The period from 2001-06, the researchers noted, had some catastrophic and unusual events, not the least of which was Hurricane Katrina and the massive destruction it caused. It also factored in the 2002 Biscuit Fire in southwest Oregon, one of the largest forest fires in modern U.S. history.The research found that the temperate forests in the eastern U.S. absorbed carbon mainly because of forest regrowth following the abandonment of agricultural lands, while some areas of the Pacific Northwest assimilated carbon during much of the year because of the region's mild climate.Crop lands were not considered in determining the annual magnitude of the U.S. terrestrial carbon sink, because the carbon they absorb each year during growth will be soon released when the crops are harvested or their biomass burned."Our results show that U.S. ecosystems play an important role in slowing down the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," the researchers wrote in their conclusion. "The dominant sources of the recent interannual variation included extreme climate events (e.g., drought) and disturbances (e.g., wildfires, hurricanes)." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
April 11, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110112132425.htm | How children cope with the aftermath of a hurricane | Living through a natural disaster is a traumatic experience for everyone, but especially for children. A new study by University of Miami Psychologist Annette La Greca and her collaborators, indicate that some children who directly experience a devastating hurricane still show signs of posttraumatic stress (PTS) almmost two years after the event. The findings suggest that new models for intervention to help children after a natural disaster are needed. | The study, titled "Hurricane-Related Exposure Experiences and Stressors, Other Life Events, and Social Support: Concurrent and Prospective Impact on Children's Persistent Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms," is published online in the Previous research mainly has focused on children during the few months after a major hurricane, or two years or more after the event. Most of the existing post-hurricane interventions are designed for children experiencing PTS two years or more after the storm. The new study "picks up where others left off," assessing children during the in-between period, at nine months (Time One) and then at 21 months after a hurricane (Time Two), explains La Greca, professor of Psychology and Pediatrics in the college of Arts and Sciences at UM and principal investigator of the study."There have been no tested interventions developed for children who still show significant symptoms of PTS almost a year after a devastating hurricane," says La Greca. "What this study shows is that there may be a need to test intervention programs to be used from several months to two years post-disaster, to keep kids from developing persistent stress."The researchers studied 384 children, in second to fourth grade that lived through Hurricane Charley, a strong category four hurricane that struck Charlotte County, in Southwest Florida in 2004. The storm caused 35 deaths, extensive damage of more than $16.3 billion and prolonged school closures.According to the study, 35 percent of the children reported moderate to very severe levels of PTS at Time One, and 29 percent were still reporting these levels of stress at Time Two. Although previous studies have shown that children stress symptoms decline the first year after the hurricane, this study shows that children who are still showing signs of stress towards the end of the first year are likely to persist having symptoms another year later."It's more common than not for most children to overcome, on their own, the effects of exposure to a severe hurricane," says Wendy Silverman,professor of Psychology and Director of the Child Anxiety and Phobia Program at FIU.Florida International University (FIU) and co-author of this study. Our findings that posttraumatic stress symptoms continued in such a high percentage of children almost two years after Hurricane Charley were somewhat unexpected."The symptoms the children experience range from reoccurring dreams about the hurricane, to being tense, more distracted, feeling like nobody understands them, more difficulty sleeping, and feeling more sad or fearful than before the disaster. In addition to experiences directly related to the hurricane, other events in the life of a child during the recovery period, such as parents' separation or an illness in the family, have a "cascading effect" that magnifies the child's difficulties"Finding that hurricane related stressors could contribute to other major life events was not necessarily counterintuitive, but, as far as I know, not documented before, and from that perspective, is a significant finding," says Silverman.Interestingly, social support from peers was found to be very important in helping to protect the child from the psychological impact of the hurricane. "For children that have experienced a destructive hurricane, restoring contact with friends provides a buffer to the negative experiences, helping kids have greater resilience and to adjust better to life after the disaster," says La Greca. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
April 6, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110406192433.htm | Development of protocols for future disasters urgently called for | Dr. Howard Osofsky, Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Medicine, is an author of a review article published in the April 7, 2011 issue of the | One year after the largest and most devastating oil spill in United States history, the magnitude of the impact of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill on human health, the environment, and the economy remains unknown. Along with the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attack and Hurricane Katrina, this most recent US catastrophe underscores both the lack of knowledge about long-term effects as well as the need for better plans to improve interventions and services to deal with the consequences of such crises.The article reports what is currently known about the toxicologic consequences of exposures in the Gulf Oil Spill as well as what is known from other spills. However, the authors note the complexity of assessing the full effects of exposures due to the presence of all five elements of a complete exposure pathway, multiple sources of contaminants, and multiple points of exposure. As well, a disproportionately large under-lying disease burden in the population of the Gulf States makes it particularly vulnerable to environmental and natural disasters. The authors report documented symptoms among some 52,000 responders from a number of sources, including self-identified health problems. Additionally, vulnerability to heat stress in the high summer temperatures in the Gulf compounded by personal protective equipment also contributed to health risks, particularly among inexperienced volunteers.Of particular concern are the mental health symptoms among response workers and community members after oil disasters. Calls to mental health and domestic violence hotlines in the Gulf area have increased since the oil spill, in keeping with reports of increased domestic violence, mental illness, and substance abuse after other disasters."Many communities affected by the Gulf oil spill were still recovering form Hurricane Katrina at the time of the Gulf oil spill, which increased the complexity of the response," notes Dr. Osofsky. "We found that 48% of students returning to schools in New Orleans, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines parishes had mental health symptoms in 2005-06. In 2009-10, before the oil spill, 30% continued to have symptoms, suggesting that a complex or repeated trauma increases vulnerability to mental health conditions."The authors recommend a number of steps be taken now -- rapid development and implementation of protocols for baseline clinical evaluations, including respiratory functions; biospecimen banking; short and long-term medical surveillance and monitoring of workers; and development of psychosocial interventions. In addition to research, clinical and referral networks addressing immediate physical and mental health symptoms and untreated existing health conditions such as asthma and hypertension are critical, they conclude, especially for vulnerable populations.Authors include Bernard Goldstein at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and Tulane University's Maureen Lichtveld, MD, MPH. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
March 18, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110318153331.htm | Japanese tsunami underscores need for elder disaster preparedness | The oldest segment of Japan's population will likely be the hardest hit as a result of the recent earthquake and subsequent tsunami, based on data from previous catastrophic events. Approximately 23 percent of Japanese citizens currently are age 65 and above. | "Japan's population -- with the highest proportion of older people in any country -- gives us an indicator of where the world as a whole is headed," said James Appleby, RPh, MPH, executive director of The Gerontological Society of America. "The significance of this demographic shift and the severity of the tsunami's effects are highlighted by the numerous reports showing that seniors suffer disproportionately during natural disasters."For example, the May 12, 2008, earthquake in Wenchuan, China, was associated with a twofold increase in the one-year mortality among a group of nonagenarians that lived nearby, according to a study published in March 2011 issue of Similarly, the spring 2006 edition of "Our thoughts are with the people of Japan as this time. Many people have limited access to food and water, and there is concern that lifesaving medicines could soon be in short supply. A number of the tragic news stories we see call attention to the needs of older people and other at-risk populations," Appleby said.There also is a growing field of literature that outlines necessary steps for elder disaster preparedness in the face of an emergency. The Additionally, multi-tiered evacuation plans, pre-existing social networks, and "go-kits" can be used to assist elders at critical moments. These kits may include detailed contact information for family members; contact information for relevant health care providers; high-nutrient foods; and a week's supply of all prescription and over-the-counter medications, including a list of medications, the required dosage, and times of administration. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
March 14, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110314152915.htm | Climate-related disasters may provide opportunities for some rural poor, study suggests | A new study in Honduras suggests that climate-related weather disasters may sometimes actually provide opportunities for the rural poor to improve their lives. | Researchers found that that the poorest inhabitants of a small village in northeastern Honduras increased their land wealth and their share of earnings relative to more wealthy residents after Hurricane Mitch devastated their village in October 1998.The findings offer a glimmer of hope from widespread concerns that the world's poor will suffer the most from shocks created by global climate change."In the face of climate shocks, the fate of the poorest is not sealed," said Kendra McSweeney, co-author of the study and associate professor of geography at Ohio State University."Our study suggests that alternate outcomes are at least possible, and there may be ways for the poor to improve their situations if they are given the opportunity to come up with their own solutions."The key for the people in this study was that, without outside interference, they were able to come up with a new method for how residents could own land -- a necessity for survival in this rural, agriculture-based community, McSweeney said.McSweeney wrote the study with Oliver Coomes of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Their study appears in the online Early Edition of the The study is based on observations made by McSweeney before and after Mitch in Krausirpi, a small community of about 600 indigenous people called the Tawahka. She began her work in the community in 1994 -- four years before Hurricane Mitch -- and continued until 2002.The town is situated along the Patuca River, about 100 kilometers due south of Honduras' coast, and it was devastated by the hurricane.Many of the town's residents made a large proportion of their living from agriculture on the nearby floodplains and upland fields. But the hurricane destroyed 95 percent of the floodplain's 125 acres of cacao orchards, effectively ending this key source of income for the residents. The storm also extensively damaged the upland manioc and banana/plantain crops, as well as the rice crop.In order to compare how residents fared after the hurricane, the researchers separated the population into thirds, based on the amount of land they owed. They found that the land-poorest third of the residents -- half of which were headed by single women -- lost 59 percent of their land to the hurricane, compared to just 36 percent land loss suffered by the land-richest third of the residents.But while the poorest were hit hardest by the hurricane, they actually showed a remarkable rebound in the years following, McSweeney said.By 2002, the households in the study had not only recouped their hurricane-caused losses, but tripled their average holdings, from 13 hectares to 42 hectares. Households that owned the most land before Mitch gained the most back by 2002.But the households who were the land-poorest before Mitch had a greater relative gain -- a 296 percent increase in land held from 1998 to 2002. Overall the total land held by the formerly land-poor doubled by 2002, the results showed."Land in the community actually became more equitably distributed after the hurricane, McSweeney said.In addition, the land-poorest households also captured a greater share of the community's income after the hurricane. Overall, incomes declined in the community after the hurricane but, surprisingly, the cash earnings of the land-poorest households actually held steady between 1998 and 2001.The result was that the poorest saw their share of the community's aggregate income increase from 18 percent to 41 percent over that time.Much of that income increase came because the poorest residents increased the amount of money they received from local salary or wage work. Many poor residents accepted positions with the forestry service and other organizations involved in post-Mitch cleanup or management of a local biosphere reserve.The young people who made up most of the area's poor were most likely to speak Spanish and were less likely to have family members at home they had to care for, which made them ideal for many of the jobs that opened up after the hurricane.But the key to the comeback of the poorest residents was a subtle change in how people could claim land as their own, the researchers found.Before the hurricane, people could claim land from the nearby forests only after they cleared it and began using it for crops. That favored the rich, since they could hire people to clear land and plant crops.The poor, on the other hand, could not pay people to clear land and didn't have time to spend on work that didn't provide money.But after the hurricane, some residents began roping off areas of the forest and claiming it as their own without clearing it. Some of the money they earned on reconstruction efforts was used to hire people to clear parts of their land, as needed for crops. But they felt secure that they had the land they claimed, even if it was not all cleared."It was a tiny shift in thinking about how you owned land. But the ramifications were extraordinary," McSweeney said."No outsiders or even Tawahka leadership even were aware of what was happening. There was no group decision. One person claimed land, and then a neighbor did. The solution took off virally within the community. It was a ground-up solution to a problem that ended up helping everyone."McSweeney said what happened in this community goes against what many experts believe happens in a disaster, at least in poor, mostly rural areas."We expect that elites will dominate, that they will use the disaster to their own advantage. The reason that didn't happen here is that the poor found a solution in their own quiet way, and it was a done deal by the time the elite had found out."McSweeney said one of the surprising aspects of what happened is that the people themselves didn't really think what they were doing was revolutionary in any way. They just saw a problem and found a way to solve it.The value of the changes in their way of life became clear in 2008, when tropical storms created flooding in the community that was as bad as that caused by Hurricane Mitch. But when residents were interviewed later, they reported that they bounced back quickly, McSweeney said.In many ways, what happened in Krausirpi is unique. But there are still generalizable lessons for the rest of the world, McSweeney said."In the face of climate-related disasters, do not discount local people's ability to sort things out on their own. That doesn't mean they don't need help, but they need the time and space to figure out solutions that work best for them," she said.The Tawahka people in this study were helped by the fact that outsiders helped provide them with jobs, but didn't interfere in how land was used in the community. That gave residents the space they needed to create their own solutions."It is not helpful to think of the poor only as vulnerable victims of climate change. They show real resilience that can help them survive in the face of challenges," McSweeney said.The research was supported by grants from McGill University, Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l'Aide à la Recherche (Québec), an International Development Research Centre Young Researchers Award (Canada), a McColl Family Fellowship from the American Geographical Society, a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Ohio State. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
March 8, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110307142236.htm | California superstorm would be costliest US disaster | A hurricane-like superstorm expected to hit California once every 200 years would cause devastation to the state's businesses unheard of even in the Great Recession, a USC economist warns. | Researchers estimate the total property damage and business interruption costs of the massive rainstorm would be nearly $1 trillion.USC research professor Adam Rose calculated that the lost production of goods and services alone would be $627 billion of the total over five years. Rose, a professor with the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development, also is the coordinator for economics at the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) at USC.That number would make the severe storm scenario "the costliest disaster in the history of the United States̶, Rose said, more than six times greater than the 2001 World Trade Center attacks and Hurricane Katrina, which each caused $100 billion in business interruption.The storm simulation U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists termed "ARkStorm -- or "atmospheric river storm" -- is patterned after the U.S. West Coast storms that devastated California in 1861-62.The storms lasted for 45 days, forming lakes in the Mojave Desert and the Los Angeles Basin. California was left bankrupt after the storms wiped out nearly a third of the state's taxable land, according to the USGS.But those storms were no freak event, said USGS scientists, who called the ARkStorm model "plausible, perhaps inevitable."The ARkStorm areas include Orange County, Los Angeles County, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay area. The megastorm likely would require the evacuation of 1.5 million people.According to the USGS, the ARkStorm would:Rose estimated the ARkStorm would cause the state's unemployment rate to jump six percentage points in the first year, a further blow to the California economy that currently has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation at 12.4 percent.Rose called the severe storm scenario "much more imaginable" after Los Angeles was hit with 9.42 inches of rain in December. It was the wettest December in downtown Los Angeles in more than a century.Climate scientists said global warming is a major factor behind the increasingly destructive power of hurricanes and other storms.The sea level is rising as oceans warm and glaciers melt, which can create higher storm surges and more disastrous flooding in coastal areas."Climate change affects how the whole ecosystem works," said Mark Bernstein, managing director of The USC Energy Institute."Storms form based on how warm the oceans are and how the jet stream changes," Bernstein said. "The consequence is [the rain] will come in shorter and more intense bursts."Businesses and local governments can minimize the long-term impacts of such a disaster, Rose said, by creating emergency plans, increasing inventories of critical materials, backing up information systems, and diversifying supply chains and routes. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
February 14, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110211202025.htm | Airborne sensor to study 'rivers in the sky' | They're called atmospheric rivers -- narrow regions in Earth's atmosphere that transport enormous amounts of water vapor across the Pacific or other regions. Aptly nicknamed "rivers in the sky," they can transport enough water vapor in one day, on average, to flood an area the size of Maryland 0.3 meters (1 foot) deep, or about seven times the average daily flow of water from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. The phenomenon was the subject of a recent major emergency preparedness scenario led by the U.S. Geological Survey, "ARkStorm," which focused on the possibility of a series of strong atmospheric rivers striking California -- a scenario of flooding, wind and mudslides the USGS said could cause damages exceeding those of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. | While atmospheric rivers are responsible for great quantities of rain that can produce flooding, they also contribute to beneficial increases in snowpack. A series of atmospheric rivers fueled the strong winter storms that battered the U.S. West Coast from western Washington to Southern California from Dec. 10 to 22, 2010, producing 28 to 64 centimeters (11 to 25 inches) of rain in certain areas. The atmospheric rivers also contributed to the snowpack in the Sierras, which received 75 percent of its annual snow by Dec. 22, the first full day of winter.To improve our understanding of how atmospheric rivers form and behave and evaluate the operational use of unmanned aircraft for investigating these phenomena, NASA scientists, aircraft and sensors will participate in a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-led airborne field campaign slated to begin Feb. 11.Called Winter Storms and Pacific Atmospheric Rivers, or WISPAR, the field campaign, which continues through the end of February, is designed to demonstrate new technology, contribute to our understanding of atmospheric rivers and assist NOAA in potentially conducting offshore monitoring of atmospheric rivers to aid in future weather predictions.A NASA Global Hawk unmanned aircraft operated out of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Southern California is scheduled to depart Dryden Friday morning, Feb. 11, on the campaign's first science flight. The 24-hour flight will study an atmospheric river currently developing in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii that appears as though it will impact the Oregon-California coast this weekend. Aboard the Global Hawk will be new weather reconnaissance devices called dropsondes developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research that will take temperature, wind and other readings as they descend through an atmospheric river. Also aboard will be an advanced water vapor sensor -- the High-Altitude Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit Sounding Radiometer, or HAMSR -- created by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.The remote-sensing HAMSR instrument analyzes the heat radiation emitted by oxygen and water molecules in the atmosphere to determine their density and temperature. The instrument operates at microwave frequencies that can penetrate clouds, enabling it to determine temperature, humidity and cloud structure under all weather conditions. This capability is critical for studying atmospheric processes associated with bad weather, like the conditions present during atmospheric river events.HAMSR Principal Investigator Bjorn Lambrigtsen of JPL says the instrument -- the most accurate and sensitive of its kind in the world -- will help scientists better understand these unique weather phenomena."The WISPAR campaign is intended to study the concentrated streams of tropical moisture that sometimes get connected with cold fronts and winter storms approaching the U.S. West Coast -- sometimes called the pineapple express, since they often originate near Hawaii -- which can result in very intense rain events," Lambrigtsen said. "HAMSR, flying on NASA's unpiloted Global Hawk well above the weather but close enough to get a much more detailed picture than is possible from a satellite, will be used to map out this phenomenon and answer scientific questions about the formation and structure of these systems."NASA's Global Hawk is an ideal platform from which to conduct WISPAR science because it is able to fly long distances, stay aloft for more than 24 hours and travel at high and low altitudes that could be dangerous for humans. Lambrigtsen will be at Dryden in the Global Hawk Operations Center during the flights, using data from the sensor and other information to adjust the Global Hawk's flight track, as necessary, to optimize the sampling of the atmospheric rivers.Lambrigtsen said the public can monitor the progress of the WISPAR science flights in real time on a WISPAR version of JPL's hurricane portal website at For more information about WISPAR, visit: | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
February 11, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110210184415.htm | Identifying large hurricanes through seismology | Storm-generated seismic signals may allow seismologists to detect large hurricanes at sea and track their intensity, adding useful data to the discussion of whether anthropogenic global warming has increased the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms, including ones that don't reach land. | Ambient noise, or microseisms, is the pervasive background signal bathing the surface of Earth and is not produced by earthquakes. These surface waves generated by ocean storms are detected even in continental interiors far from source regions.Researchers at Northwestern University demonstrate that the August 1992 category 5 Hurricane Andrew can be detected using microseisms recorded at the Harvard, Massachusetts seismic station, even while the storm is as far as 1200 miles away at sea. When applied to decades of existing analog seismograms, this methodology could yield a seismically identified hurricane record for comparison to the pre-aircraft and pre-satellite observational record. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
February 6, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110205143630.htm | Geographer recreates ‘The Great Louisiana Hurricane of 1812’ | Nearly 200 years before Hurricane Katrina, a major storm hit the coast of Louisiana just west of New Orleans. Because the War of 1812 was simultaneously raging, the hurricane's strength, direction and other historically significant details were quickly forgotten or never recorded. | But a University of South Carolina geographer has reconstructed the storm, using maritime records, and has uncovered new information about its intensity, how it was formed and the track it took.Dr. Cary Mock's account of the "Great Louisiana Hurricane of 1812" appears in the current issue of the "It was a lost event, dwarfed by history itself," said Mock, an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. "Louisiana was just in possession by the United States at the time, having been purchased from France only years before, and was isolated from the press."Mock says historians have long known that a hurricane hit New Orleans on Aug. 19, 1812, but they didn't know the meteorological details about the storm."Hurricane Katrina is not the worst-case scenario for New Orleans, as its strongest winds were over water east of the eye," said Mock. "The 1812 hurricane was the closest to the city, passing just to the west. It wasn't as big as Katrina, but it was stronger at landfall, probably a mid-three or four category hurricane in terms of winds."Detailed information about past hurricanes is critical to helping climatologists today forecast and track hurricanes. But until recently, little was known of hurricanes that occurred before the late 19th century, when weather instrumentation and record keeping became more sophisticated and standardized. Mock's research has shed light on much of the nation's hurricane history that has remained hidden for centuries."A hurricane like the one in August 1812 would rank among the worst Louisiana hurricanes in dollar damage if it occurred today," said Mock. "Hurricane Betsey was 100 miles to the west. Katrina was to the east. A 1915 hurricane came from the South. By knowing the track and intensity, as well as storm surge, of the August 1812 hurricane, we have another worst-case-scenario benchmark for hurricanes. If a hurricane like it happened today -- and it could happen -- it would mean absolute devastation."Mock has spent the last decade conducting research and creating a history of hurricanes and severe weather of the Eastern U.S. that dates back hundreds of years. Using newspapers, plantation records, diaries and ship logs, he has created a database that gives scientists the longitudinal data they've lacked. His research has been funded by nearly $700,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).Mock began researching the August 1812 hurricane along with other early Louisiana hurricanes in 2006. It took 18 months for him to reconstruct the 1812 storm's complete track.Newspaper accounts, which included five from Louisiana and 17 from other states, described hourly timing of the storm's impact, wind direction and intensity, rainfall, tide height and damage to trees and buildings.The Orleans Gazette description of the impact of storm surge on the levees is one example:"The levee almost entirely destroyed; the beach covered from fragments of vessels, merchandize, trunks, and here and there the eye falling on a mangled corpse. In short, what a few hours before was life and property, presented to the astonished spectator only death and ruin," reported the newspaper.The environmental conditions of the Louisiana coast were different in 1812; the sea level was lower, elevation of the city was higher and the expanse of the wetlands far greater. These conditions would have reduced the storm surge by at least several feet, says Mock.Some of the most valuable sources to Mock's research were maritime records, which include ship logbooks and ship protests, records submitted by ship captains to notaries detailing damage sustained to goods as a result of weather. Ship logs, kept hour by hour, include data about wind scale, wind direction and barometric pressure.Because of the war, England bolstered its naval presence, providing Mock, the first academic researcher to conduct historical maritime climate research, with a bounty of records to help him recreate the storm's path and intensity."The British Royal Navy enforced a blockade of American ports during the War of 1812," said Mock. "The logbooks for ships located in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea had all sorts of valuable information."In addition to 12 British Navy logbooks, he was able to use information from logbooks of the USS Enterprise and another from an American merchant vessel. Ship protest records from the New Orleans Notarial Archives provided Mock with some surprising contributions."I was initially pretty pessimistic on what I would find in the ship protests," said Mock. "I thought I'd find a few scraps and be in and out in two days. I was wrong. I found a trove of material and ended up going back eight times."Archivists presented Mock with upwards of 100 books for every year, each 800 pages in length and none indexed with the word hurricane. After scouring the records, Mock uncovered nearly 50 useful items related to the 1812 hurricane, including accounts from the schooner, Rebecca, which described the storm in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico in a protest that was filed with notary Marc Lafitte.It described a 4 p.m. heavy gale that increased to a perfect hurricane wind, with the shifting of winds by noon the next day. The shift of winds from the northeast to the northwest told Mock that the storm track passed to the east of the Rebecca.Using the logs and protests, Mock was able to correlate the precise location of ships with the hourly weather and create a map of the storm's path through the Gulf of Mexico."Its initial approach was toward Mississippi, but then it turned northwest toward Louisiana as it approached landfall in the afternoon on Aug. 19," Mock said. "The USS Enterprise had the most detailed wind observations at New Orleans. A change in winds to the southwest around local midnight tells me that the storm center skimmed as little as five kilometers to the west of New Orleans."To further understand the hurricane's formation and dissipation, Mock reviewed records stretching as far north as Ohio and east to South Carolina. Included among them were meteorological records by James Kershaw in Camden, S.C., which are part of the collections of USC's South Caroliniana Library."I wanted to collect data from a wide area to understand the weather patterns, pressure systems and the very nature of the 1812 hurricane," said Mock. "A better understanding of hurricanes of the past for a wide area provides a better understanding of hurricane formation and their tracks in the future." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
February 2, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110202172307.htm | NASA Aqua Satellite sees powerful Cyclone Yasi make landfall in Queensland, Australia | NASA's Aqua satellite captured visible and infrared imagery of powerful Cyclone Yasi as it was making landfall in Queensland. The center of the monster cyclone Yasi made landfall on Australia's northeastern coast early Thursday (Australia local time) bringing heavy rainfall, severe winds and storm surge. | On Feb. 2 at 03:35 UTC/1:35 p.m. Australia local time, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Cyclone Yasi before it made landfall in Queensland, Australia. The eye of the cyclone was very clear and indicative of the power of this tropical cyclone. Damaged buildings, downed trees and power outages have been reported.A Cyclone Warning is still in effect today for coastal and island communities from Cooktown to Proserpine, and west inland to the Northern Territory border. The Cyclone Warning was cancelled between Cape Flattery and Cooktown. The Australian Bureau of meteorology warned that flooding rains between Cairns and Proserpine will gradually move inland as Yasi tracks to the west. Flood Warnings are in effect for several rivers between Cairns and MacKayAt 03:29 UTC/1:29 p.m. Australia local time on February 2 (10:29 p.m. EST, Feb. 1), the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of Cyclone Yasi as its center was just southeast of Willis Island. The infrared image showed powerful thunderstorms with strong convection and heavy rainfall surrounding a large area around a very clear eye. The temperatures in the cloud tops were as cold as or colder than -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius).Tropical Cyclone Yasi was making landfall as a powerful Category Four cyclone with maximum sustained winds near 135 knots (155 mph/ 250 kmh) on Feb. 2, at 1500 UTC (10 a.m. EST/ 1 a.m. Australia local time on Feb. 3). It was located about 245 miles east of Cairns near 17.5 South and 146.8 East and moving west-southwest near 13 knots (15 mph/ 24 kmh). Maximum waveheights associated with Yasi were 42 feet (~13 meters) in the Coral Sea.The automated Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) weather station on Willis Island provided amazing data this morning as Cyclone Yasi swept past. Willis Island is located east of Queensland, Australia. Rainfall exceeded 60 mm (2.36 inches) in one hour and pressure had fallen to near 938 millibars. Windspeed peaked at 75 knots (86 mph/138 kmh) before the equipment stopped working.As Yasi made landfall and swept inland, Cairns, located to the north of Townsville, recorded a low reading of atmospheric pressure near 983 millibars. Rainfall was 16 mm (0.6 inch) in one hour, and maximum sustained winds were recorded as high as 34 knots (39 mph/63 kmh).At 3 a.m. local time, the center of Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi had moved inland and was located near 18.1 South and 145.4 East. It was moving west-southwest near 33 kmh (20 mph) and had a minimum central pressure of 941 millibars. The storm is forecast to weaken and dissipate within 48 hours. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
February 2, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110202002452.htm | Monster cyclone Yasi eyes Australia in NASA image | Mass evacuations are underway in the northeastern Australian state of Queensland in anticipation of what forecasters expect will be the largest cyclone ever to hit the continent. | Yasi has intensified rapidly and currently has winds gusting up to 295 kilometers per hour (183 mph). It is expected to maintain that intensity-equivalent to a Category Five hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale--until landfall in northeastern Queensland between Cairns and Innisfail during the late evening local time on Feb. 2 (early morning Feb. 2 in the United States).Shown here is the latest infrared image of Yasi from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, built and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. It was taken on Feb. 1, 2011, at 7:17 a.m. PST (10:17 a.m. EST). A distinct eye is visible, and the outer bands of the storm can be seen nearing the Australian coast.The AIRS data create an accurate 3-D map of atmospheric temperature, water vapor and clouds, data that are useful to forecasters. The image shows the temperature of Yasi's cloud tops or the surface of Earth in cloud-free regions. The coldest cloud-top temperatures appear in purple, indicating towering cold clouds and heavy precipitation. The infrared signal of AIRS does not penetrate through clouds. Where there are no clouds, AIRS reads the infrared signal from the surface of the ocean waters, revealing warmer temperatures in orange and red. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
February 1, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110131111111.htm | NASA satellite tracks menacing Australian cyclone | Fresh on the heels of a series of crippling floods that began in December 2010, and a small tropical cyclone, Anthony, this past weekend, the northeastern Australian state of Queensland is now bracing for what could become one of the largest tropical cyclones the state has ever seen. | The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, built and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., captured this infrared image of Yasi on Jan. 31, 2011, at 6:29 a.m. PST (9:29 a.m. EST). The AIRS data create an accurate 3-D map of atmospheric temperature, water vapor and clouds, data that are useful to forecasters. The image shows the temperature of Yasi's cloud tops or the surface of Earth in cloud-free regions. The coldest cloud-top temperatures appear in purple, indicating towering cold clouds and heavy precipitation. The infrared signal of AIRS does not penetrate through clouds. Where there are no clouds, AIRS reads the infrared signal from the surface of the ocean waters, revealing warmer temperatures in orange and red.The AIRS image shows deep convective (thunderstorm) bands wrapping tighter into the low-level circulation center. Wrapping bands of thunderstorms indicate strengthening.At the approximate time this image was taken, Yasi had maximum sustained winds near 90 knots (166 kilometers per hour, or 103 mph), equivalent to a Category Two hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. It was centered about 1,400 kilometers (875 miles) east of Cairns, Australia, moving west at about 19 knots per hour (35 kilometers per hour, or 22 mph). Cyclone-force winds extend out to 48 kilometers (30 miles) from the center.Yasi is forecast to move west, then southwestward, into an area of low vertical wind shear (strong wind shear can weaken a storm). Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center expect Yasi to continue to strengthen over the next 36 hours. The Center forecasts a landfall just south of Cairns as a large 100-plus knot-per-hour (185 kilometers per hour, or 115 mph) system by around midnight local time on Wednesday, Feb. 2. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
January 24, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110122105606.htm | Persistent drought to linger across southern United States | While wet and snowy weather has dominated the western U.S., persistent drought conditions are likely to linger in the Southern Plains and Southeast through mid to late spring, according to NOAA's National Weather Service. La Niña has kept storms and most of their precipitation in the north, leaving the South drier than normal. | "The speed with which the drought developed across the southern United States is rather unusual considering that just last year El Niño dominated the region with abundant precipitation," said Bill Proenza, director of NOAA's National Weather Service southern region." Then it was as if a switch was flipped during the summer, changing to La Niña conditions."One of the major aspects of the emergence of La Niña was a very busy Atlantic hurricane season, which spawned 19 tropical storms, making it the third most active on record. Despite the large number of storms, only Hurricane Alex and Tropical Storm Hermine produced any appreciable rainfall in the southern United States. Those storms only affected Texas; no significant rainfall from an organized tropical system fell along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida.Sparse tropical rainfall and the dry conditions associated with La Niña combined to create severe to extreme drought conditions for nearly a third of the South and Southeast by late fall and early winter.While the drought touches all of the Gulf Coast states, Texas and Florida are the most affected. From October through December, Texas received only five to 50 percent of normal precipitation, with portions of the lower Rio Grande averaging less than five percent of normal. During that period, for example, Brownsville received only 0.14 inches (normal is 6.55 inches) and Del Rio received 0.04 inch (normal is 3.89 inches). To the north in Austin, only 1.55 inches of rainfall was observed, compared to the normal of 8.34 inches.In Florida, 51 percent of the state was in severe to extreme drought by the end of 2010. Some areas experienced the driest July 1 -- December 31 period on record. For example, Gainesville received only 12.95 inches of precipitation, compared to the previous record low of 15.25 inches. The city normally receives 27 inches. Daytona Beach ended the period with 14.71 inches compared to the previous record low of 15.35 inches − its normal is 30 inches.In central and southern Florida, the South Florida Water Management District rain gauge network recorded an average of only 2.97 inches during the October through December period, breaking the previous record low average of 4.07 inches. Moreover, the District reports that Florida's Lake Okeechobee ended the year at 12.4 feet, 2.3 feet below average.In addition to agricultural and water conservation concerns, one of the major threats from the drought is the growing wildfire danger. More than 42,000 fires accounted for more than 775,000 acres burned throughout the affected southern tier states during 2010.Texas and Florida were among the hardest hit states. In Texas, the severe wildfire threat prompted Governor Rick Perry to issue a disaster proclamation for 244 of the state's 254 counties. Meanwhile, Florida lost more than 400,000 acres to wildfires last year, with more predicted to come. Florida's Forestry Division notes La Niña is expected to continue at least through spring and again anticipates greater than normal wildfire activity in 2011.Getting the word out regarding likely La Niña impacts is imperative. "By providing information on current and future climate conditions to the public and to other federal, state and local decision makers, the National Weather Service can help them prepare for and react to such extreme weather events and to climate variability," said David Brown, Ph.D., regional climate services director for NOAA's National Weather Service southern region.La Niña has developed 13 times since 1950, and the current La Niña ranks as the sixth strongest. The question climate experts are asking now is whether it will fade with the approach of summer or continue into next year."Of the five stronger La Niñas that occurred, four resulted in multi-year events," said Victor Murphy, climate program manager for NOAA's National Weather Service southern region. "If this La Niña persists until next winter, the threat of drought conditions in the south extending into next year will be heightened." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
January 12, 2011 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110111080848.htm | Under pressure: Stormy weather sensor for hurricane forecasting | It's hard to believe that, in this day and age, we don't have a way to measure sea-level air pressure during hurricanes. NASA researchers, however, are working on a system that will improve forecasting of severe ocean weather by doing just that. The device measures sea-level air pressure, a critical component of hurricane formation -- and one that has been extremely difficult to capture. | The Differential Absorption Barometric Radar (DIABAR) prototype is scheduled to make its second flight early this year.DIABAR remotely senses barometric pressure at sea level, which is important in the prediction and forecasting of severe weather, especially hurricanes, over oceans.But the ability to measure sea-level air pressure is a major missing link in storm observation, says Dr. Bing Lin, an atmospheric scientist at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va."Air pressure is a driving force of weather systems, especially under severe weather conditions like hurricanes," he said. "For severe storms, the forecasts of the intensity and track can be significantly improved by pressure measurements."A hurricane begins as a tropical wave, a westward-moving area of low air pressure. As warm, moist air over the ocean rises in the low air-pressure area, surrounding air replaces it, and circulation forms. This produces strong gusty winds, heavy rain and thunderclouds -- a tropical disturbance.As air pressure drops and winds sustain at 38 mph or more, the disturbance becomes a tropical depression, then a tropical storm, and finally a hurricane with sustained winds of over 73 mph.Lin hopes eventually to be able to measure sea-level air pressure from aircraft flyovers and space-based satellites. The local coverage provide by flyovers, combined with a broad perspective from space, will provide enough information to significantly improve the ability of forecasters to determine how intense a hurricane is and where it's headed."Large and frequent sea surface measurements are critically needed," he said. "These measurements cannot be made from buoys and aircraft dropsondes. The only hope is from remote sensing using aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and satellites."An effort to remotely sense barometric pressure at sea-surface level using microwaves was undertaken at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in the 1980s. "JPL has extensive experience on spaceborne microwave sensors," said Lin.DIABAR was first deployed on a Navy MH-60S helicopter in 2009 at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland."We flew it, got the results, and it looks great," said Lin.The next step is testing this year on a blimp called the Bullet™ Class 580, the world's largest airship. E-Green Technologies Inc. in Alabama makes the aircraft.The 235-foot long, 65-foot diameter lighter-than-air vehicle is designed to fly on algae-based biofuel at speeds up to 74 mph and altitudes up to 20,000 feet. It will be stationed in a hanger at Moffett Federal Airfield at NASA Ames Research Center in California.DIABAR is a partnership between NASA Langley, Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., and the State University of New York at Albany. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,011 |
October 6, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101006175209.htm | NASA loosens GRIP on Atlantic hurricane season | NASA wrapped up one of its largest hurricane research efforts ever last week after nearly two months of flights that broke new ground in the study of tropical cyclones and delivered data that scientists will now be able to analyze for years to come. | While the 2010 hurricane season has been a rather quiet one for coastal dwellers, the churning meteorology of the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea seemed to cooperate well with the science goals of Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment. Those goals were designed to answer some of the most fundamental yet still unanswered questions of hurricane science: What ultimately causes hurricanes to form? Why do some tropical depressions become strong hurricanes, while others dissipate? What causes the rapid strengthening often seen in hurricanes?Mission scientists wanted to capture data on hurricanes as they formed and intensified. Ideally, the NASA planes -- the DC-8, WB-57 and Global Hawk -- would also fly over systems that were weakening, or that were expected to form into hurricanes yet did not. When the flights had ended, all those goals had been met."It was successful beyond my reasonable expectations. It requires cooperation with the weather, and good luck with the aircraft," said mission scientist Ed Zipser, of the University of Utah. "It's not so much a logistical challenge as it is a toss of the dice by Mother Nature during our time available. But it takes a good airplane, a skillful crew and good luck with the equipment."Flying to HurricanesHurricanes Earl and Karl each became important objects of observation for scientists during GRIP. The DC-8 flew to Earl four times, criss-crossing the storm as it intensified to a category 4 hurricane and then weakened. On the final Earl flight, as the storm was breaking down and losing strength, the Global Hawk made its debut hurricane flight and passed over Earl's eye in concert with the DC-8, providing valuable comparison measurements for the instruments on-board both aircraft. The WB-57 also flew Earl as well as Karl.At the outset, scientists hoped that several aspects of GRIP would help gather important data as well as complete a couple of technical accomplishments. First, collaboration with the Air Force, NOAA and the National Science Foundation would allow scientists to observe a single storm system with as many as six aircraft. Second, GRIP featured the debut of NASA's Global Hawk drone in a hurricane research capacity. The unmanned plane's 24-hour flight range gave scientists the ability to directly observe a hurricane as it changed over time and distance in a way that conventional planes and satellites have not done before.Both of these aspects of GRIP were used to great effect during the two major hurricanes observed during the campaign, Earl and Karl. "We're all very pleased we were able to get the Global Hawk over a hurricane," said mission scientist Gerry Heymsfield, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "There was a question about that. That's a major accomplishment both on the science side and the capability side. It really paves the way for future research."As the campaign went on, Global Hawk pilots, based remotely at Dryden Flight Research Center, near Palmdale, Calif., grew more comfortable with the drone's capability at 60,000 feet and over a hurricane. On Sept. 16 and 17, the Global Hawk made a 25-hour flight that included 20 passes over the eye of Karl as it was emerging into a hurricane -- precisely the type of formation and storm development that scientists hoped to capture during GRIP."None of our other planes can do that," said GRIP project manager Marilyn Vasques, of Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Cal. "They've been learning the capabilities of this aircraft at every flight. We challenged it more and more, and the aircraft and Dryden have performed really well."On that same flight, the collaboration with the other agencies reached full steam, as six aircraft flew over Karl. The DC-8 was even able to follow the storm after it made landfall in Mexico and began to deteriorate. It is unusual to get the clearances to fly over a hurricane once it has reached land, making the scientific payoff all the more valuable. "We were able to capture some rare detail once it made landfall," Zipser said.What's in the data?For all the logistics involved in coordinating flights and using a drone designed for military purposes in a scientific campaign, the chief purpose of the experiment remained getting good data. The instruments on-board the GRIP planes provided 3-D observations of storm's cloud and precipitation structures, measurements of wind speed in the horizontal and the vertical dimensions, data on lightning strikes and lidar measurements of clouds and aerosols in and around hurricanes. These are all in addition to the basic yet important measurements of factors such as humidity, pressure and temperature that provide context for more advanced observations.While scientists will mine the GRIP observations for months and years, the team knows now that it was mostly able to fly over the types of storms and conditions that it wanted to fly over. Both Earl and Karl provided strong examples of rapid intensification. The Global Hawk arrived over Karl shortly after it reached hurricane status, and continued to fly over it as it rapidly strengthened to a Category 3 storm in the next nine to 12 hours. The flights over Karl could provide great insight into the genesis of that system, and the reasons for its rapid intensification soon after it passed over the Yucatan Peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico."The flights into Karl as soon as it emerged over the Gulf and became a hurricane gave us just a fantastic example, and that was the day the Global Hawk did 20 passes over the eye," Zipser said. The GRIP planes were also able to fly to tropical systems -- such as Gaston -- that were forecast to strengthen and become hurricanes but ultimately did not. In the quest to understand why some tropical depressions become hurricanes and others don't, these were also important flights.The system known as Gaston formed out of an African easterly wave -- one of a number of depressions that routinely form off the coast of Africa and often become hurricanes. It was forecast to become a full-fledged hurricane but it didn't. "It had all the elements to become a storm, so scientifically that's very interesting," Vasques said.Wrapping upWith the flight portion of the campaign ended, scientists will soon move on to analyzing the data they've gathered, Heymsfield said. Scientists who worked on GRIP and many others will likely mine this cache for years to come. These observations could provide insights with great value to science, which is still trying to fully understand hurricanes, and to society, which could eventually benefit from more accurate forecasts of storm strength and development."There will be some quick results. But the rest of it, in my experience, really takes years," Heymsfield said. "This is probably the most timely, coupled experiment that I've ever seen. It's really worked out well. We collected a wealth of data that the scientists are really excited to analyze." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
September 29, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100923104217.htm | Coral bleaching likely in Caribbean this year | According to the NOAA Coral Reef Watch monitoring system, coral bleaching is likely in the Caribbean in 2010. With temperatures above-average all year, NOAA's models show a strong potential for bleaching in the southern and southeastern Caribbean through October that could be as severe as in 2005 when over 80 percent of corals bleached and over 40 percent died at many sites across the Caribbean. Scientists are already reporting coral bleaching at several Caribbean sites and severe bleaching has been reported from other parts of the world. | The NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW) satellite coral bleaching monitoring shows sea surface temperatures continue to remain above-average throughout the wider Caribbean region. Large areas of the southeastern Caribbean Sea are experiencing thermal stress capable of causing coral bleaching. The western Gulf of Mexico and the southern portion of the Bahamas have also experienced significant bleaching thermal stress. The CRW Coral Bleaching Thermal Stress Outlook indicates that the high stress should continue to develop in the southern and southeast Caribbean until mid-October. Prolonged coral bleaching, can lead to coral death and the subsequent loss of coral reef habitats for a range of marine life."The early warning predictions of NOAA's CRW program are vital to assist coral reef managers in making early preparations for coral bleaching events," says Billy Causey, southeast regional director for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. "While managers can't do anything immediately to prevent coral bleaching, these early warnings give them time to monitor and track the stressful event, thus learning more about both direct and secondary impacts of bleaching on coral reefs around the world."The decline and loss of coral reefs has significant social, cultural, economic and ecological impacts on people and communities in the Caribbean, the United States, Australia and throughout the world. As the "rainforests of the sea," coral reefs provide services estimated to be worth as much as $375 billion globally each year."High temperatures cause corals to force out the symbiotic algae that provide them with food. This makes the corals appear white or 'bleached' and can increase outbreaks of infectious disease," said Mark Eakin, Ph.D., coordinator of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch. "Temperatures are high in the Caribbean, and we expect this to continue. This season has the potential to be one of the worst bleaching seasons for some reefs.""A NOAA survey cruise just returned from the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary where we saw serious bleaching," said Emma Hickerson, sanctuary research coordinator for the site, located off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. "Several species were bleached and we are concerned we could lose much of the fire corals this year."Even though a variety of stresses -- namely thermal stresses -- continue to rise in the Caribbean basin, temperatures are expected to begin cooling in the Gulf of Mexico and Florida. In addition, recent hurricanes and tropical storms that passed near the U.S. Virgin Islands have cooled the waters there. NOAA researchers have shown that tropical weather systems can cool the high temperatures that cause bleaching, and NOAA forecasts that this Atlantic hurricane season will probably be more active than usual.In 2005, the year of the worst bleaching on record in the Caribbean, no tropical storms passed close enough to cool the Virgin Islands, resulting in 90 percent of the area corals being bleached and 60 percent dying. Overall the 2005 bleaching event was the result of the largest, most intense thermal stress recorded in the Caribbean during the 25-year NOAA satellite record. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
September 21, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100921143930.htm | Parting the waters: Computer modeling applies physics to Red Sea escape route | The biblical account of the parting of the Red Sea has inspired and mystified people for millennia. A new computer modeling study by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) shows how the movement of wind as described in the book of Exodus could have parted the waters. | The computer simulations show that a strong east wind, blowing overnight, could have pushed water back at a bend where an ancient river is believed to have merged with a coastal lagoon along the Mediterranean Sea. With the water pushed back into both waterways, a land bridge would have opened at the bend, enabling people to walk across exposed mud flats to safety. As soon as the wind died down, the waters would have rushed back in.The study is intended to present a possible scenario of events that are said to have taken place more than 3,000 years ago, although experts are uncertain whether they actually occurred. The research was based on a reconstruction of the likely locations and depths of Nile delta waterways, which have shifted considerably over time."The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus," says Carl Drews of NCAR, the lead author. "The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that's in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in."The study is part of a larger research project by Drews into the impacts of winds on water depths, including the extent to which Pacific Ocean typhoons can drive storm surges. By pinpointing a possible site south of the Mediterranean Sea for the crossing, the study also could be of benefit to experts seeking to research whether such an event ever took place. Archeologists and Egyptologists have found little direct evidence to substantiate many of the events described in Exodus.The work, published in the online journal, The Exodus account describes Moses and the fleeing Israelites trapped between the Pharaoh's advancing chariots and a body of water that has been variously translated as the Red Sea or the Sea of Reeds. In a divine miracle, the account continues, a mighty east wind blows all night, splitting the waters and leaving a passage of dry land with walls of water on both sides. The Israelites are able to flee to the other shore. But when the Pharaoh's army attempts to pursue them in the morning, the waters rush back and drown the soldiers.Scientists from time to time have tried to study whether the parting of the waters, one of the famous miracles in the Bible, can also be understood through natural processes. Some have speculated about a tsunami, which would have caused waters to retreat and advance rapidly. But such an event would not have caused the gradual overnight divide of the waters as described in the Bible, nor would it necessarily have been associated with winds.Other researchers have focused on a phenomenon known as "wind setdown," in which a particularly strong and persistent wind can lower water levels in one area while piling up water downwind. Wind setdowns, which are the opposite of storm surges, have been widely documented, including an event in the Nile delta in the 19A previous computer modeling study into the Red Sea crossing by a pair of Russian researchers, Naum Voltzinger and Alexei Androsov, found that winds blowing from the northwest at minimal hurricane force (74 miles per hour) could, in theory, have exposed an underwater reef near the modern-day Suez Canal. This would have enabled people to walk across. The Russian study built on earlier work by oceanographers Doron Nof of Florida State University and Nathan Paldor of Hebrew University of Jerusalem that looked at the possible role of wind setdown.The new study, by Drews and CU oceanographer Weiqing Han, found that a reef would have had to be entirely flat for the water to drain off in 12 hours. A more realistic reef with lower and deeper sections would have retained channels that would have been difficult to wade through. In addition, Drews and Han were skeptical that refugees could have crossed during nearly hurricane-force winds.Studying maps of the ancient topography of the Nile delta, the researchers found an alternative site for the crossing about 75 miles north of the Suez reef and just south of the Mediterranean Sea. Although there are uncertainties about the waterways of the time, some oceanographers believe that an ancient branch of the Nile River flowed into a coastal lagoon then known as the Lake of Tanis. The two waterways would have come together to form a U-shaped curve.An extensive analysis of archeological records, satellite measurements, and current-day maps enabled the research team to estimate the water flow and depth that may have existed 3,000 years ago. Drews and Han then used a specialized ocean computer model to simulate the impact of an overnight wind at that site.They found that a wind of 63 miles an hour, lasting for 12 hours, would have pushed back waters estimated to be six feet deep. This would have exposed mud flats for four hours, creating a dry passage about 2 to 2.5 miles long and 3 miles wide. The water would be pushed back into both the lake and the channel of the river, creating barriers of water on both sides of newly exposed mud flats.As soon as the winds stopped, the waters would come rushing back, much like a tidal bore. Anyone still on the mud flats would be at risk of drowning.The set of 14 computer model simulations also showed that dry land could have been exposed in two nearby sites during a windstorm from the east. However, those sites contained only a single body of water and the wind would have pushed the water to one side rather than creating a dry passage through two areas of water."People have always been fascinated by this Exodus story, wondering if it comes from historical facts," Drews says. "What this study shows is that the description of the waters parting indeed has a basis in physical laws." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
September 9, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100908162944.htm | Deepwater Horizon oil remains below surface, will come ashore in pulses, expert says | Gregory Stone, director of LSU's WAVCIS Program and also of the Coastal Studies Institute in the university's School of the Coast & Environment, disagrees with published estimates that more than 75 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon incident has disappeared. | Stone recently participated in a three-hour flyover of the affected area in the Gulf, where he said that subsurface oil was easily visible from overhead."It's most definitely there," said Stone. "It's just a matter of time before it makes itself known again."Readings from WAVCIS indicate that the direction of the ocean currents near the middle and bottom of the water column are aimed offshore; in other words, this submerged oil will be pushed out to sea, where it will then rise higher into the water column and be washed onto land, particularly during storms."It is going to come on shore not consistently, but rather in pulses because it is beneath the surface," he said. "You may get one or two, maybe even five or 10 waves coming ashore with absolutely no oil … but eventually, it's going to come ashore." He also cautions that whatever oil doesn't remain suspended in the water column may simply sit atop the seafloor, waiting to be mixed back into the currents."It will simply be stirred up during rough seas or changing currents and reintroduced into the water column," he explained.Another timely concern is hurricane season since September is generally one of the most active months of the year. "Storm surge, when combined with storm waves from a hurricane, could stir up this submerged oil and bring it -- lots of it -- onshore and into the wetlands," Stone said. "Even a tropical storm could result in more oil on the shoreline. And that's a reality we need to consider and be prepared for."Formally known as the Wave-Current-Surge Information System, WAVCIS is based off of a network of buoys, oil platforms sensors and ADCPs, or Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers, in the Gulf of Mexico. The ADCPs are exceptionally sensitive. Housed on the seafloor, they send acoustic signals up to the surface of the water, measuring the entire water column for everything from current direction to speed and temperature. It's also integrated with the National Data Buoy Center, or NDBC, system, providing researchers worldwide with a comprehensive look at the Gulf environment, which is an invaluable research tool during the inevitable hurricane season, and also during disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon tragedy."WAVCIS is among the most sensitive ocean observing systems in the entire nation," said Stone. "We measure a wide variety of physical parameters at the water surface, water column and on the sea bed. This information is extremely helpful in predicting or determining where the oil is -- and where it's going to go. Because our information is updated hourly and available to the public, our lab has played a primary role in providing facts about the situation surrounding the oil's movement and location."Stone, whose experience with WAVCIS has spanned everything from natural to manmade disasters, knows that only time will tell the severity of the oil's impact."This is a long term problem. It's not simply going to go away. I was in Prince William Sound 10 years after the Exxon-Valdez event, and when I lifted up a rock, there was still residual oil beneath it," he said. "Thus, the residence time of oil in the coastal environment can be substantial, although ecosystem conditions along the northern Gulf are very different and will likely recover quicker than in Alaska. We here at WAVCIS can at least track Gulf conditions to monitor the situation as closely as possible."For more information about WAVCIS, visit | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
September 2, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100901161552.htm | NASA and NOAA's newest GOES satellite ready for action | NASA and NOAA's latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-15, has successfully completed five months of on-orbit testing and has been accepted into service. The satellite has demonstrated operational readiness of its subsystems, spacecraft instruments and communications services. GOES-15 is the third and final spacecraft in the GOES N-P Series of geostationary environmental weather satellites. | The GOES fleet help NOAA forecasters track life-threatening weather and solar activity that can impact the satellite-based electronics and communications industry. During the checkout period, GOES-15 delivered high-resolution images from space, including the first visible and infrared images of Earth taken by its imager instrument, and the first image of the sun taken by its solar X-ray imager instrument."NASA is ecstatic that we were able to deliver on our promise to provide NOAA and this Nation with three geosynchronous weather satellites," said Andre Dress, GOES Deputy Project Manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "From the very beginning, we set the bar high and we have attained all our goals. It is something that NASA and its contractors (Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems, Lockheed Martin, ITT and United Launch Alliance) can be very proud of."NOAA operates GOES-13 in the east and GOES-11 in the west -- both provide weather observations covering more than 50 percent of the Earth's surface. The GOES-15 spacecraft, designed and built by Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems, will be placed in an on-orbit storage location at 105 degrees west longitude should one of the operational GOES satellites degrade or exhaust their fuel. It will share a parking space with GOES-14, currently in the same storage orbit. Both satellites can be made operational within 24 hours to replace an older satellite."With more than 35 million Americans living in hurricane-prone areas, we need the reliable, accurate data GOES provide," said Gary Davis, director of the Office of Systems Development at NOAA's Satellite and Information Service.NOAA manages the GOES program, establishes requirements, provides all funding and distributes environmental satellite data for the United States. NASA Goddard procures and manages the design, development and launch of the satellites for NOAA on a cost reimbursable basis. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
September 2, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100901073405.htm | New solar prediction system gives time to prepare for the storms ahead | A new method of predicting solar storms that could help to avoid widespread power and communications blackouts costing billions of pounds has been launched by researchers at the University of Bradford. | Solar storms involve the release of huge amounts of hot gas and magnetic forces from the surface of the sun into space at around a million miles an hour. The next major solar storms are expected in 2012-13 as part of the sun's 11-year weather cycle. A 2008 US National Academy of Sciences report estimated that modern reliance on electronics and satellite communications means a major storm could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.Although major solar eruptions (coronal mass ejections) normally take several days to reach the Earth, the largest recorded in 1859 took just eighteen hours. Solar flares -- which can also cause significant disruption to communications systems -- take just a few minutes. So advance warning is of vital importance to enable steps to be taken to avoid the worst effects of solar activity.Up to now, solar weather prediction has been done manually, with experts looking at 2D satellite images of the sun and assessing the likelihood of future activity. But the team from the University of Bradford's Centre for Visual Computing have created the first online automated prediction system, using 3D images generated from the joint NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory satellite (SOHO). The system can be seen at work at Already in use by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), the Bradford Automated Solar Activity Prediction system (ASAP) identifies and classifies sun spots and then feeds this information through a model which can predict the likelihood of solar flares. The system is able to accurately predict a solar flare six hours in advance and the team are working to achieve a similar accuracy for the prediction of major solar eruptions in the near future.Reader in Visual Computing, Dr Rami Qahwaji, who led the EPSRC-funded research, says: "Solar weather prediction is still very much in its infancy, probably at about the point that normal weather forecasting was around 50 years ago."However, our system is a major step forward. By creating an automated system that can work in real time, we open up the possibility for much faster prediction and -- with sufficient data -- prediction of a wider range of activity. With NASA's new Solar Dynamic Observatory satellite which came into operation in May, we have the chance to see the sun's activity in much greater detail which will further improve our prediction capabilities."The ASAP model is based on historical data which was analysed to identify patterns in the sun's activity. Dr Qahwaji is now applying for more funding to further improve the system and ensure it can be adapted to work with the latest sun monitoring satellites. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
August 26, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100823080629.htm | 'Legacy of Katrina' report details impact of stalled recovery on mental health status of children | Five years ago Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans caused the evacuation of 1.5 million Gulf Coast residents. After a year, 500,000 people remained displaced, many residing in highly transitional shelters, including the notorious FEMA trailer parks. | Now at the five-year mark, substantial consequences from this prolonged displacement have resulted in widespread mental health issues in children living in the region, according to a new study by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and a related white paper from the Children's Health Fund (CHF).Together, these documents indicate that although considerable progress has been made in rebuilding the local economy and infrastructure, there is still an alarming level of psychological distress and housing instability. Investigators believe that housing and community instability and the uncertainty of recovery undermine family resilience and the emotional health of children. These factors characterize what researchers are calling a failed recovery for the Gulf region's most vulnerable population: economically disadvantaged children whose families remain displaced.The CHF report, "Legacy of Katrina: The Impact of a Flawed Recovery on Vulnerable Children of the Gulf Coast," expands upon on a study by NCDP researchers, who have followed a cohort of more than 1,000 families affected by Katrina and the ensuing disruption.According to the Gulf Coast Child & Family Health Study, funded by the Children's Health Fund and published in the current issue of American Medical Association's "This study points to a major crisis facing the children of the post-Katrina Gulf Region," says Irwin Redlener, M.D., director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health and president of the Children's Health Fund. "From the perspective of the Gulf's most vulnerable children and families, the recovery from Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans has been a dismal failure.""Previous studies have demonstrated a significant increase in the prevalence of anxiety, depression and posttraumatic stress disorder following Hurricane Katrina, as well as a rise in violence and suicide," said Italo Subbarao D.O., MBA, deputy editor of AMA's Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness journal. "This study adds further credence to widely accepted views that adults and children affected by catastrophic emergencies can experience up to a 40 percent increased in mental and behavioral illness."According to David M. Abramson, Ph.D., MPH, director of research at the NCDP and senior author of the study which looked at the roles of parents and communities in children's recovery, "Children are completely dependent upon others in their lives to provide the security and stability that will help them recover. This suggests that the many support systems in children's lives -- their parents, their communities, and their schools -- are not yet functioning properly. The slow recovery of children's mental health in Gulf Coast populations is a bellwether indicator of how well the region is recovering."Additional key findings:The study findings are supported by clinical data from the Children's Health Fund, which provides mobile clinics that travel to underserved areas in the Gulf Coast to provide care for families and children. In the period of June 2009 through June 2010, despite improvement in housing conditions in Louisiana, psychiatric, developmental or learning-related disorders in children were diagnosed as frequently as respiratory illness. And in New Orleans alone, approximately 30,000 school children were not able to return to public school. However, data also shows that children who were relocated sooner did better in school than students with longer periods of displacement and those who were enrolled in higher performing schools did the best, thus highlighting the importance of social systems in a child's post-disaster recovery.Both the study and the clinical reports from the Children's Health Fund's Gulf Coast pediatric programs paint a clear picture of how insufficient government response and recovery efforts continue to take a toll on children's welfare, especially those who are the most underserved. Dr.Redlener, a pediatrician and professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, outlined a number of implications for policymakers and others: "Affected families need urgent assistance to return to a state of 'normalcy' characterized by safe communities and stable housing. Nearly two out of three children affected by Katrina continue to experience serious mental and behavioral problems or the stress of unstable housing or both, with children living in poverty over two times as susceptible to serious emotional disorders. We believe that this represents at least 20,000 children affected by Katrina -- and perhaps considerably more. Immediate action needs to be taken to increase mental health services in the region."Dr. Redlener continues, "And it's not just clinical services that are needed by these marginalized families. Every effort must be made to rapidly bring back a 'state of normalcy', that is, stable safe housing for every family in communities with appropriate access to essential services and economic stability."The Gulf Coast Child & Family Health Study has collected mental health data in the Gulf Coast since January 2006 and covers a random sample of 1,079 households in Louisiana and Mississippi, including 427 children. Face-to-face interviews were conducted by trained interviewers, and the key outcome variable was Serious Emotional Disturbance, based upon the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a widely validated diagnostic screener. The data were collected in four waves over the course of four years with the majority of data for this analysis drawn from the fourth round of data, collected through March 2010. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
August 25, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100823131741.htm | Disasters especially tough on people with disabilities, mental disorders | As hurricane season gets into full swing, mental health teams will be ready to respond and help survivors cope with possible devastation. Psychologists have analyzed decades of research and found that disaster response strategies should address the needs of the population affected, specifically those with disabilities and mental disorders. | Research conducted in the aftermaths of the Oklahoma City bombing and Hurricane Katrina also showed that the type of disaster can have a distinct effect on how people respond psychologically. These and other findings are reported in a special section of "Katrina taught us a harsh lesson about the plight of vulnerable people in times of disaster and national emergency," said the journal's editor, Timothy Elliott, PhD, of Texas A&M University. "Solutions to these problems won't be provided by any single profession or service, which is why this special section brings together colleagues from psychology, special education and rehabilitation administration to provide information that will help us find solutions."In a study looking at Hurricane Katrina victims, researchers focused on survivors with a wide range of disabilities. Nearly two years after the storm, they surveyed and interviewed disaster case managers and supervisors who provided services to 2,047 individuals with disabilities and their families through the Katrina Aid Today project. They found that considerable barriers to housing, transportation and disaster services were still present two years after the storm. For example, they found that survivors with disabilities were less likely to own homes than survivors without disabilities. This meant that some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency homeowner programs did not help them or, in the case of FEMA trailers, were not accessible to them.People with disabilities were also less likely to be employed, which affected their ability to pay utility bills or purchase furniture when they did transition to more permanent housing. Individuals with disabilities were more likely to have medical needs, which affected their ability to travel to service agencies or get jobs. Case management with the survivors with disabilities was seen as taking longer because these people needed assistance in multiple areas."Case managers who are knowledgeable about the needs of people with disabilities are essential when navigating an already difficult service system following a disaster of this magnitude," said the study's lead author, Laura Stough, PhD, from Texas A&M University.Another analysis focused on two different studies -- one examining the bombing's survivors and the other Hurricane Katrina evacuees. The Oklahoma City study assessed 182 survivors six months after the bombing. The Hurricane Katrina study sampled 421 people who had been evaluated in a mental health clinic at a Dallas shelter for Katrina evacuees.Of the Oklahoma City bombing survivors, the most common psychiatric diagnosis was post-traumatic stress disorder, with 34 percent of participants suffering from the problem. The second most common psychiatric diagnosis was major depression, according to the article. Most of the participants, 87 percent, were injured in the bombing; 20 percent of those had to be hospitalized.The research analysis noted that Hurricane Katrina affected a wider swath of an already disadvantaged population. The main tasks in the psychiatry clinic at the shelter were rapid diagnostic assessment, resumption of psychotropic medications, and linkage to ongoing psychiatric care for already existing disorders."Interventions to address unmet treatment needs for an abundance of pre-existing and persistent psychiatric illness would not have been the primary response needed for Oklahoma City survivors," said the study's lead author, Carol North, MD, from the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. "This article represents just one example of why disaster intervention plans need to target expected mental health problems emerging in different populations, settings and time frames."Another study looked at the prevalence of injury and illness following Hurricane Ike in the Galveston, Texas, area. About 4 percent of the population had experienced injuries, and 16 percent of households had someone suffering from an illness two to six months following the disaster, according to a survey of 658 adults. The risk for injury or illness increased in areas where there was more damage. Some other stressors that occurred at the same time as these injuries or illnesses were post-traumatic stress, dysfunction and physical disability."The associations of injury with distress and disability suggest that community programs should reach out to injured people for early mental health and functional assessments," said study author Fran Norris, PhD, director of the National Center for Disaster Mental Health Research at the Dartmouth Medical School. "Follow-up support services that address mental health and functional problems could be part of the treatment plan for those people treated for disaster-related injuries or illnesses." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
August 24, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100823113616.htm | Tropically speaking, NASA investigates precipitation shapes, sizes for severity | Rain drops are fat and snowflakes are fluffy, but why does it matter in terms of predicting severe storms? | We've all seen fat rain drops, skinny rain drops, round hailstones, fluffy snowflakes and even ice needles. This summer, NASA researchers are going to get a look at just how much these shapes influence severe storm weather. To do it, they'll have to look inside the guts of some of the world's fiercest storms. NASA recently assembled a team of hurricane scientists from across the country to carry out high-altitude-aircraft surveillance to explore in detail how storms form, intensify and dissipate.Earth scientists and engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have redesigned one of their instruments, the Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer, or AMPR, to better observe the different shapes of precipitation. In August and September, AMPR will fly at an altitude of 60,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. It will sit in the bomb bay of a WB-57 airplane, which is based at the NASA Johnson Space Center's Ellington Field in Houston.During these flights, AMPR researchers will test a new build -- the instrument is an upgraded version of the original AMPR built at NASA Marshall in the early 1990s -- and use it to participate in NASA's upcoming hurricane study, the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes field campaign, better known as GRIP. The campaign involves three planes mounted with 14 different instruments, including AMPR. The instruments will all work together to create the most complete view of a hurricane to date.Researchers hope the hurricane campaign will help them answer some of nature's most perplexing questions. As tropical storms grow, they produce massive amounts of rain -- a key element in the development of full-scale hurricanes. Scientists will use AMPR along with the other instruments, such as data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite, to figure out just how hard it's raining inside these ferocious storms, and how much of that rain is associated with the production of ice during intensification."If you don't know how hard it's raining or where the rain is forming in the atmosphere, you don't know hurricanes," said Dr. Walt Petersen, AMPR principle investigator and Marshall Center earth scientist. "AMPR provides us an opportunity to see their precipitation structure by using an instrument like those currently flying on, for example, the TRMM and Aqua satellites in space."That's because AMPR doesn't just give scientists new information about hurricanes. The instrument also enables them to test equipment currently in space. Every day, numerous weather satellites orbit Earth to measure the rainfall rate of storms across the globe. They work much like AMPR except over much larger scales. Because they're so far above the Earth and moving so fast, they can take only one measurement every few miles along their track. Scientists can correct for such coarse measurements, but to do so they need highly accurate data. AMPR can take several measurements per mile, giving scientists the data they need to verify that weather satellites continue to provide accurate data."It's like the pixels in your computer screen," Petersen said. "When satellites take measurements, they have really big pixels, and we might lose some of the finer details of what's happening on the ground. AMPR has much smaller pixels, much higher resolution, and allows us to see a much clearer picture. It's a part of our arsenal to make sure what we're measuring from space makes sense. We'd hate to send something up and not have it accurately measure what's happening on the ground."That information translates into better predictions of hurricane track and intensity -- how hard it's going to rain in a certain area when a hurricane hits, for example, aiding in early flood warnings.AMPR doesn't just measure how hard rain falls. Within the last several years, the AMPR team has worked vigorously to upgrade the instrument. These upgrades will enable AMPR to more accurately detect what kind of precipitation is in the storm. By identifying the shape of the precipitation, AMPR may present scientists with recognizable signatures that define different types of precipitation. For example, varying combinations of fat or skinny rain drops, snow, ice or hail distributed throughout the depth of the storm will produce different brightness temperatures when viewed at different angles. A storm may develop and behave differently depending on these variations.Engineers packed the 380-pound AMPR payload with a delicate set of instruments and computer hardware. AMPR gathers data by measuring the amount of microwave radiation rising from the surface beneath -- often the ocean. Because rain water is a better emitter of microwave radiation than ocean water, the radiation measured from rainfall is actually greater during a big storm. This measurement is converted to a "brightness temperature," which correlates to how much radiation is being generated. The more rain, the higher the brightness temperature.Alternatively, if a hurricane's clouds are full of ice or hail, as they usually are, much of the microwave radiation is scattered away. The corresponding brightness temperature is much lower than the anticipated surface measurement. Scientists can use those changes to determine how hard it's raining inside a storm or how much ice a given storm might contain."Whether rain drops are fat or skinny, and whether ice is round or bumpy, these factors are critical when we're trying to estimate rainfall rates," Petersen explained. "Because of air drag, the rate at which these precipitation particles fall through the air depends on their thickness or shape. A fat rain drop falls more slowly than a hail stone of the same size, for example -- that factor enables you to determine rainfall rate."After the GRIP experiment ends in September, Petersen and his team will unload the data and begin analyzing it, adding their findings to the increasingly large body of hurricane knowledge."The GRIP experiment will give us information about how a hurricane circulates and how it intensifies. Basically we have a bunch of theories about the role of precipitation in hurricanes, and we need to test them. That's where instruments like AMPR come in."After this summer's hurricane study, AMPR will continue to fly in storm campaigns. It's already scheduled for a major joint NASA and U.S. Department of Energy study in April 2011 to support the Global Precipitation Measurement.Petersen loves the challenge. Storms have fascinated him ever since his junior year of high school, when lightning struck just inches away from him while he was at a drive-in movie."The thing that excites me is looking inside a storm that we can't fly into," he said. "We can't fly inside these big storms because they're just too nasty. The only way to get information about what's going on inside is to do what AMPR does."Being able to look at the guts of a storm and figure out what's going on, that's the key thing for me," he added.With any luck, AMPR's look into hurricanes will put scientists one step closer to predicting some of the world's fiercest storms. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
August 14, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100813121916.htm | Ocean's color affects hurricane paths | A change in the color of ocean waters could have a drastic effect on the prevalence of hurricanes, new research indicates. In a simulation of such a change in one region of the North Pacific, the study finds that hurricane formation decreases by 70 percent. That would be a big drop for a region that accounts for more than half the world's reported hurricane-force winds. | It turns out that the formation of typhoons -- as hurricanes are known in the region -- is heavily mediated by the presence of chlorophyll, a green pigment that helps the tiny single-celled organisms known as phytoplankton convert sunlight into food for the rest of the marine ecosystem. Chlorophyll contributes to the ocean's color."We think of the oceans as blue, but the oceans aren't really blue, they're actually a sort of greenish color," said Anand Gnanadesikan, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey. "The fact that [the oceans] are not blue has a [direct] impacton the distribution of tropical cyclones."In the study, to be published in an upcoming issue of Gnanadesikan compared hurricane formation rates in a computer model under two scenarios. For the first, he modeled real conditions using chlorophyll concentrations in the North Pacific observed by satellites. He then compared that to a scenario where the chlorophyll concentration in parts ofthe North Pacific Subtropical Gyre -- a large, clockwise-circulation pattern encompassing most of the North Pacific -- was set to zero.In the latter scenario, the absence of chlorophyll in the subtropical gyre affected hurricane formation by modifying air circulation and heat distribution patterns both within and beyond the gyre. In fact, along the equator, those new patterns outside the gyre led to an increase in hurricane formation of about 20 percent. Yet, this rise was more than made up for by the 70 percent decrease in storms further north, over and near the gyre. The model showed that more hurricanes would hit the Philippines and Vietnam, but fewer would make landfall in South China and Japan.In the no-chlorophyll scenario, sunlight is able to penetrate deeper into the ocean, leaving the surface water cooler. The drop in the surface temperature in the model affects hurricane formation in three main ways: cold water provides less energy; air circulation patterns change, leading to more dry air aloft which makes it hard for hurricanes to grow.The changes in air circulation trigger strong winds aloft, which tend to prevent thunderstorms from developing the necessary superstructure that allows them to grow into hurricanes.A decrease in hurricanes in the North Pacific is just one example of how changing chlorophyll concentrations can have far-reaching, previously unconsidered, effects. The specific outcomes over different patches of the ocean will vary based on local currents and ocean conditions, said Gnanadesikan.A complete absence of chlorophyll in parts of the ocean would be a drastic change, Gnanadesikanadmits. Yet, its potential impact is still important to consider, he maintains. The northern Pacific gyre that he studied is already the "biological desert of the ocean," he said. So the surprise, then, is that "even in this region that is apparently clear, biologically-mediated heating is important."This research was primarily supported by NOAA, with additional support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
August 11, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810131624.htm | Deployment of buoys to measure air and sea interactions in typhoons launched from Taiwan | An international team of scientists and technicians from the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School, the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Environment Canada are participating in a groundbreaking buoy deployment that will help them to better understand interactions between the ocean and atmosphere during typhoons. The research is funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research. | The R/V Revelle, a Scripps research vessel departed from the port of Kao-hsiung, Taiwan with two tandem buoy sets onboard: the boat-shaped EASI (Extreme Air-Sea Interaction) buoy and the ASIS (Air-Sea Interaction Spar) buoy. This is the first time these buoys will be used in the typhoon-prone Western Pacific. In the past, these buoy deployments have taken place in the Atlantic Ocean during hurricane season, and on separate experiments in the Southern Ocean and Labrador Sea.The researchers are deploying the two sets of buoys in tandem, about 450 miles southeast of Taiwan to thoroughly test them in typhoon force conditions. The buoys will be out at sea for 3 months collecting valuable data that scientists will use to understand the exchange dynamics and fluxes occurring between the atmosphere and ocean during the intense typhoon conditions."We have successfully used these buoys to measure air-sea interactions and wave dynamics in the Atlantic in a variety of storm conditions and are now looking forward to applying this technology to the western Pacific where super typhoons develop quite frequently," said the PI of this project, Dr. Hans Graber, professor and executive director of UM's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing. "In the last several years we have added new technologies and improved the data collection capabilities of these buoys as well as made the buoys more robust to withstand extreme weather conditions. In addition we will also be using satellite telecommunications to query the buoys routinely from Miami and retrieve data. "The buoys will measure the momentum, heat, and moisture exchange between the air atmosphere and ocean at the midst of tropical cyclones. This information will help improve weather forecast models that predict typhoon intensity. It will also give the research community a better idea of the distribution of wind and how force is distributed. There will be sonic anemometers (acoustic devices that measure wind speed and stress at high resolution) and a suite of other sensors that measure air temperature, humidity, and water temperature. The buoys will also have ADCPs (acoustic Doppler current profilers) to measure currents as a function of depth, as well as temperature probes in the upper ocean and acoustic devices to measure turbulence near the surface. A strong set of piano-like wires arranged in a pentagon will measure small scale details of the ocean surface (roughness) and the directional properties of waves."The buoys feature a Compact Lightweight Aerosol Spectrometer (CLASP) device that measures the near-surface marine aerosol production mechanisms, or sea spray from wave-breaking events that result from typhoon force winds," said Dr. Will Drennan, UM professor and associate dean of undergraduate studies for the Rosenstiel School. "These measurements could be especially important as the spray layer has a significant impact on the drag coefficient, a key parameter used in creating weather forecast models."The team includes several people from UM, including applied marine physics professors Hans Graber and Will Drennan, associate scientist Neil Williams, marine technician Mike Rebozo, post-doctoral researchers Rafael Ramos and Michelle Gierach, graduate students Björn Lund, Henry Potter, Tripp Collins and Sharein El-Tourky, and undergraduate Marine Science student Anibal Herrera. They are joined by Joe Gabriele and Cary Smith of Environment Canada, John Kemp, Jim Dunn and Jim Ryder of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Dr. Ian Brooks of the University of Leeds, UK. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
August 9, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100807214624.htm | NASA's hurricane quest set to begin | In less than two weeks, NASA scientists will begin their quest for the holy grail of hurricane research. | The exact conditions required to kickstart a tropical depression into a hurricane largely remain a mystery. Though scientists know many of the ingredients needed, it is unclear what processes ultimately drive depressions to form into the intense, spinning storms that lash the U.S. coasts each summer."Hurricane formation and intensification is really the 'holy grail' of this field," said Ed Zipser, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah and one of three program scientists helping to lead the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment this summer.With GRIP, NASA's first domestic hurricane project since 2001, the agency has assembled the largest-ever hurricane research experiment to investigate these questions. Three NASA planes, multiple NASA satellites and four planes from research partners NOAA and NSF will combine to make unprecedented measurements of tropical storms as they are forming (or dying out) and intensifying (or weakening). The intense scientific focus on these meteorological processes could provide new insight into the fundamental physics of hurricanes and ultimately improve our ability to forecast the strength of a storm at landfall. Predictions of hurricane strength continue to lag behind the accuracy of storm track predictions, but accurate predictions of both are needed for the best possible preparation before landfall.With each aircraft outfitted with multiple instruments, scientists will be taking a closer look at hurricanes with hopes of gaining insight into which physical processes or large-scale environmental factors are the key triggers in hurricane formation and intensification.The GRIP fleet includes NASA's Global Hawk, the unmanned drone built by Northrop Grumman and also used by the U.S. Air Force, WB-57 and DC-8. The NASA aircraft will be deployed from Florida (DC-8), Texas (WB-57) and California (Global Hawk) and will fly at varying altitudes over tropical storms in an attempt to capture them at different stages of development."One of the potential data-gathering breakthroughs of GRIP could be to continuously observe a tropical storm or hurricane for 24 hours straight, by including aircraft from all three agencies," said GRIP Project Manager Marilyn Vasques. The Global Hawk alone could fly continuously over a storm system for up to 16 hours.While geostationary satellites used for forecasting can observe the basic movement of a storm across the Atlantic, these aircraft instruments will be able to "see" below the cloud-tops and uncover what is happening in the internal structure of the storm."That's what makes this really unique, the ability to observe one of these storms up close as it changes over its life-cycle. Before we've only been able to get a few hours of data at a time," Vasques said. "We want to see storms that become hurricanes, and we want to see some that don't become hurricanes, so we can compare the data. The same is true for hurricane intensification.""When you think of analyzing it later, we want to break down what the temperatures were, what the winds were doing, what the aerosol concentration was, to see if we can start detecting a pattern," Vasques said.The variety and number of instruments will allow scientists to investigate multiple science questions at once: What role does dust from the Sahara play in hurricane formation? Can lightning be used as a predictor of a storm's change in intensity? Do widespread environmental conditions such as humidity, temperature, precipitation and clouds lead to cyclone formation, or are smaller-scale interactions between some of these same elements the cause?Scientists at NASA and the many academic and government research partners in GRIP are excited to put several new state-of-the-art hurricane observing instruments in the field. A powerful microwave radiometer and a radar will provide insight into the massive "hot towers" of convection found in cyclones, and a NASA-designed and -built lidar (laser radar) will provide the first-ever measurements of wind speed in three dimensions -- not just east, west, north and south, but also vertically.These instrument advancements, in addition to the deployment of the Global Hawk in a major Earth science campaign for the first time, have NASA scientists anxious to take to the field."This is one of the most exciting points in my career," said Ramesh Kakar, GRIP program manager and lead of NASA's recently formed Hurricane Science Research Team. "Satellites can only get a brief glimpse of what is happening inside a hurricane, and we get very excited about seeing that. Now imagine if you could watch a storm unfold for 20 hours."The ability to keep an eye on developing storms for that length of time will largely depend on a complex deployment of the various planes, from different locations, at different times and at different altitudes. The NASA planes have different flight ranges, with the DC-8 able to fly for eight hours, the WB-57 four hours and the Global Hawk 30 hours. Those flight ranges include the time required to get to the storm and back to home base."In general, when the aircraft are deployed to study potentially developing hurricanes, they will fly a basic grid pattern over the weather system," Zipser said. 'Ideally this pattern will be repeated on consecutive days. Once planes are flying over an established hurricane, they'll fly repeatedly over the eye of the storm and covering its breadth, creating somewhat of an asterisk pattern centered on the eye. Flights on consecutive days will deliver the best cache of data on how the storm changed over time."Flights begin Aug. 15 and will last until Sept. 25. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
August 8, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100807205434.htm | NOAA still expects active Atlantic hurricane season; La Niña develops | The Atlantic Basin remains on track for an active hurricane season, according to the scheduled seasonal outlook update issued Aug. 5, 2010 by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service. With the season's peak just around the corner -- late August through October -- the need for preparedness plans is essential. | NOAA also announced that, as predicted last spring, La Niña has formed in the tropical Pacific Ocean. This favors lower wind shear over the Atlantic Basin, allowing storm clouds to grow and organize. Other climate factors pointing to an active hurricane season are warmer-than-average water in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean, and the tropical multi-decadal signal, which since 1995 has brought favorable ocean and atmospheric conditions in unison, leading to more active seasons."August heralds the start of the most active phase of the Atlantic hurricane season and with the meteorological factors in place, now is the time for everyone living in hurricane prone areas to be prepared," said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.Across the entire Atlantic Basin for the whole season -- June 1 to November 30 -- NOAA's updated outlook is projecting, with a 70 percent probability, a total of (including Alex, Bonnie and Colin):These ranges are still indicative of an active season, compared to the average of 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes; however, the upper bounds of the ranges have been lowered from the initial outlook in late May, which reflected the possibility of even more early season activity."All indications are for considerable activity during the next several months," said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. "As we've seen in past years, storms can come on quickly during the peak months of the season. There remains a high likelihood that the season could be very active, with the potential of being one of the more active on record."Be prepared for the hurricane season with important information available online at | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
August 4, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100803132740.htm | Survey of coastal residents shows Gulf oil spill has significant impact on families | As the acute phase of the Gulf oil spill transitions to a chronic phase, marked by long-term challenges to the public health, environment and economy, researchers at Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness interviewed over 1,200 adults living within 10 miles of the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Mississippi, in collaboration with the Children's Health Fund and The Marist Poll of Poughkeepsie, NY. | The survey, conducted by telephone in July, after the Deepwater Horizon well was capped, found evidence of significant and potentially lasting impact of the disaster on the health, mental health, and economic fortunes of residents and their children and on the way they live their everyday lives. The findings have implications for health and economic policies going forward.Among the key survey findings:"Over the last few days we are seeing an effort by officials who are suggesting that, as the oil is less visible on the surface, the 'crisis is over.' Clearly, this is far from the case," says Irwin Redlener, MD, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCPD) at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health and president of the Children's Health Fund (CHF). "As shown by our survey, done after the well was capped, there is a significant and persistent public health crisis underscored by the large number of children with medical and psychological problems related to the oil disaster. These concerns will need to be assessed and managed in these coastal communities where there are few or no pediatricians and vastly insufficient mental health professional capacity.'The survey found a dramatic relationship between economic vulnerability and health effects. Adults with household incomes under $25,000 were by far the most likely to report physical and mental health effects for themselves and also among their children."Much the way Hurricane Katrina had its greatest effect on those with the least, the oil spill is also having a greater impact on those coastal residents who are 'economically vulnerable,' says David Abramson, PhD, MPH, director of Research at NCDP and assistant professor of clinical sociomedical sciences at the Mailman School. "In an area still recovering from the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, the oil spill represents a significant test of a population's resiliency."Dr. Redlener, a pediatrician and professor at the Mailman School, outlined a number of implications for policymakers and others: "Guidelines need to be developed, with active participation of relevant federal agencies, with respect to the short- and long-term health risks of remaining in affected communities. This should include recommendations, based on known science, on when families would be advised to move out of the community entirely." He also believes BP should provide funds to state and local agencies involved with providing assessment and care to affected families. "Children are particularly susceptible to the consequences of this disaster and need to have special resources focused on their needs."The National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia's Mailman School, which designed the survey, intends to follow a cohort of at least 1,000 children and adults in the region to determine the continuing health and mental health consequences of the oil spill. Meanwhile the Children's Health Fund will bring badly needed mobile pediatric care to the region shortly. "There are literally no pediatricians in the lower two-thirds of Plaquemines Parish," notes Dr. Redlener, "and this is one of the worst hit areas." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
August 3, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100802151323.htm | Miami at high risk of hurricane winds; Tampa low risk, new hurricane risk tool shows | Bad news, Miami. Of all Florida's major population centers, the city is the most vulnerable to strong hurricane winds, according to Florida State University researchers who developed a new tool to estimate the frequency of extreme hurricane winds at a particular location. | Geography doctoral student Jill C. Malmstadt, working with Professor James B. Elsner and research consultant Thomas H. Jagger, created the Hurricane Risk Calculator and used it to estimate the risk to 12 cities in Florida. The findings are outlined in "Risk of Strong Hurricane Winds to Florida Cities," to be published in the November issue of the American Meteorological Society's"Not unexpectedly, we found that the extreme wind risk from hurricanes varies across the state," Malmstadt said. "Areas in the northeast, such as Jacksonville and in the Big Bend between Tampa and Tallahassee, have longer periods between occurrences of a given strong wind speed compared to areas such as Miami and Pensacola. That's also where we found the highest annual threats of a catastrophic hurricane event."Using the Hurricane Risk Calculator, the researchers found that Miami can expect to see winds of 112 mph or stronger -- that's a category 3 hurricane -- once every 12 years on average. Miami last saw winds of that strength with Hurricane Wilma in 2005. By contrast, Tallahassee, the state's least vulnerable city, can expect to see winds of that speed only once every 500 years.The Hurricane Risk Calculator is a statistical model based on extreme value theory -- a theory that is used to estimate the occurrence of the rare and extreme events like hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, Malmstadt said. Researchers applied the theory to wind speed data derived from the National Hurricane Center's Hurricane Database, which is the official record of tropical cyclones for the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea dating back to 1851."This method is unique because it uses extreme value distributions that allow us to better estimate extreme events," Malmstadt said. "Other approaches use various distributions that work incredibly well when trying to estimate the average event, like category 1 or 2 hurricanes. They may be underestimating or overestimating the extremes even if they are right on with the average."The Hurricane Risk Calculator can provide important information to emergency planners, the insurance industry and homeowners, Malmstadt said, noting that the state of Florida especially has experienced more than $450 billion in damages from hurricanes since the early 20th century."Hurricanes top the list of the most destructive and costly natural disasters in the United States," she said. "For society to better cope with and mitigate these disasters, a more precise estimate of the risk of high winds on the local level is needed. The Hurricane Risk Calculator does that."Florida is particularly vulnerable to hurricanes because warm seas surround the state, but some locations are even more vulnerable than others. Along with Miami, its South Florida neighbors Port St. Lucie, Key West and Cape Coral are the cities with the highest wind strength and shortest return periods.Gulf Coast cities Pensacola and Panama City are no strangers to strong hurricane winds, although their locations in the western Panhandle mean they are protected somewhat by the Florida peninsula itself from winds coming from the southeast. Still, Pensacola can expect to see a hurricane with 112 mph winds once every 24 years, according to Malmstadt.The cities of Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville join Tallahassee as the cities with the least vulnerability.Still, Malmstadt cautioned that "people who live anywhere in Florida could receive a hurricane threat, so they should always be ready and prepared for one of the extremes."The researchers also used the data that went into the Hurricane Risk Calculator to determine whether the wind risk from hurricanes is changing over time. Although they found that the frequency of hurricanes and major hurricanes is constant throughout time, there is an upward trend in the intensity of the strongest hurricanes in Florida. Intensification refers to the amount of increase in maximum wind speeds between hourly observations of a given hurricane."The strongest hurricanes appear to be getting stronger," Malmstadt said. "This is consistent with the increasing ocean heat content noted over the Gulf of Mexico and the western Caribbean."However, the greater intensification rates do not necessarily mean that hurricanes are more intense at the point of landfall, she said, adding that additional study is needed to make that determination.The National Science Foundation, the Risk Prediction Initiative of the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Studies and the Florida Catastrophic Storm Risk Management Center provided support for this study. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
July 29, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728092629.htm | Birth of a hurricane | Summer storms are a regular feature in the North Atlantic, and while most pose little threat to our shores, a choice few become devastating hurricanes. | To decipher which storms could bring danger, and which will not, atmospheric scientists are heading to the tropics to observe these systems as they form and dissipate--or develop into hurricanes.By learning to identify which weather systems are the most critical to track, the efforts may ultimately allow for earlier hurricane prediction, and add several days to prepare for a hurricane's arrival.With primary support from NSF, the Pre-Depression Investigation of Cloud Systems in the Tropics (PREDICT) mission will run from August 15 to September 30, 2010, the height of hurricane season.Flying aboard the NSF/NCAR Gulfstream V (G-V) research aircraft, formerly known as HIAPER, researchers will make observations from close proximity, and above, storm systems. In addition to deploying dropsondes--parachute-borne instrument packages--the researchers will use remote sensing and cloud physics instruments to gather data on temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and characteristics of ice particles and their nuclei, which may include African dust."We hope to test recently developed hypotheses about flow features of tropical waves that help distinguish which ones will develop into tropical storms," said Christopher Davis, of the NSF-sponsored National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a principal investigator on the project. "These hypotheses require measurements across hundreds of miles, but with details in places down to one mile or so, and even less when we consider the ice particles themselves."The NSF/NCAR research team will coordinate their observations with two concurrent, but independent, missions in the region: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project known as GRIP (Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) IFEX (Intensity Forecasting Experiment)."The NSF/NCAR G-V offers us unprecedented capability to collect critical atmospheric measurements over regions far larger than has been practical for traditional 'lower-and-slower' turboprop hurricane-hunter aircraft," added Bradley Smull, NSF program director for Physical and Dynamic Meteorology. "The G-V will allow our investigators to sample the inner workings of a large number of towering tropical cloud systems, and ultimately to better discriminate those that will develop into full-blown hurricanes from those that will not."In addition to researchers from NCAR, the project will include collaborators from the Naval Postgraduate School, University at Albany-SUNY, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Miami, NorthWest Research Associates of Redmond, Wash., New Mexico Tech, Purdue University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
July 23, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100721121701.htm | Supercomputer reproduces a cyclone's birth, may boost forecasting | As a teen in his native Taiwan, Bo-wen Shen observed helplessly as typhoon after typhoon pummeled the small island country. Without advanced forecasting systems, the storms left a trail of human loss and property destruction in their wake. Determined to find ways to stem the devastation, Shen chose a career studying tropical weather and atmospheric science. | Now a NASA-funded research scientist at the University of Maryland-College Park, Shen has employed NASA's Pleiades supercomputer and atmospheric data to simulate tropical cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar in 2008. The result is the first model to replicate the formation of the tropical cyclone five days in advance.To save lives from the high winds, flooding, and storm surges of tropical cyclones (also known as hurricanes and typhoons), forecasters need to give as much advance warning as possible and the greatest degree of accuracy about when and where a storm will occur. In Shen's retrospective simulation, he was able to anticipate the storm five days in advance of its birth, a critical forewarning in a region where the meteorology and monitoring of cyclones is hampered by a lack of data.At the heart of Shen's work is an advanced computer model that could improve our understanding of the predictability of tropical cyclones. The research team uses the model to run millions of numbers -- atmospheric conditions like wind speed, temperature, and moisture -- through a series of equations. This results in digital data of the cyclone's location and atmospheric conditions that are plotted on geographical maps.Scientists study the maps and data from the model and compare them against real observations of a past storm (like Nargis) to evaluate the model's accuracy. The more the model reflects the actual storm results, the greater confidence researchers have that a particular model can be used to paint a picture of what the future might look like."To do hurricane forecasting, what's really needed is a model that can represent the initial weather conditions -- air movements and temperatures, and precipitation -- and simulate how they evolve and interact globally and locally to set a cyclone in motion," said Shen, whose study appeared online last week in the "We know what's happening across very large areas. So, we need really good, high-resolution simulations with the ability to detail conditions across the smallest possible areas. We've marked several forecasting milestones since 2004, and we can now compute a storm's fine-scale details to 10 times the level of detail than we could with traditional climate models."The cyclone's birth prediction is possible because the supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., can process atmospheric data for global and regional conditions, as well as the fine-scale measurements like those around the eye of a storm. NASA built the Pleiades supercomputer in 2008, incrementally boosting its processing "brain power" since to the capacity of 81,920 desktop CPUs. The upgrades laid the groundwork for Shen and others to gradually improve simulations of varying aspects of a storm -- from simulations of the path, then intensity, and now the actual genesis of a storm.The improved simulations can translate into greater accuracy and less guesswork in assessing when a storm is forming."There is a tendency to over-warn beyond the actual impact area of a storm, leading people to lose confidence in the warning system and to ignore warnings that can save their lives," said study co-author Robert Atlas, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, Fla., and former chief meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md."Although we've seen tremendous forecasting advances in the past 10 years -- with potential to improve predictions of a cyclone's path and intensity -- they're still not good enough for all of the life-and-death decisions that forecasters have to make. Tropical cyclones have killed nearly two million people in the last 200 years, so this remaining 'cone of uncertainty' in our predictions is unacceptable."As promising as the new model may be, Atlas cautions that "Shen's model worked for one cyclone, but it doesn't mean it'll work in real-time for future storms. The research model Shen and predecessors at NASA have developed sets the stage for NOAA's researchers to hone and test the new capability with their own models."Shen's use of real data from Nargis -- one of the 10 deadliest cyclones on record -- with the new global model also yields insights into the dynamics of weather conditions over time and across different areas that generate such storms."In the last few years, high-resolution global modeling has evolved our understanding of the physics behind storms and its interaction with atmospheric conditions more rapidly than in the past several decades combined," explained Shen, who presented the study last month before peers at the American Geophysical Union's Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Taipei, Taiwan. "We can 'see' a storm's physical processes with this advanced global model -- like both the release of heat associated with rainfall and changes in environmental atmospheric flow, which was very difficult until now." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
July 22, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100722160455.htm | Oil devastation found at major Gulf breeding site | A Cornell Lab of Ornithology team working in the Gulf has documented what may be the worst oil spill devastation of a major bird colony so far. | The documentary and research team, led by biologist and multimedia producer Marc Dantzker, first visited Raccoon Island on Louisiana's Gulf Coast on June 18, 2010, and found one of the largest waterbird colonies in the state to be oil free and in excellent health.The team returned July 11 and 12 after hearing reports from local biologists of significant oil landfall with impact to birds. The team found oil present on rocks and all along the beaches. Almost all of the juvenile brown pelicans they saw had at least some oil on them, and they estimated that roughly 10 percent were "badly oiled." Roughly forty percent of juvenile terns also had visible oil on them.Dantzker said he suspects high seas driven by Hurricane Alex and a full moon may have contributed to the disaster."The island has a single line of inshore boom on the bay side, and in some places this boom showed signs that oil splashed over the top and there was oil on shore behind these booms," Dantzker said. "What Gulf-side boom there previously was has been destroyed and is washed up in piles, or deep into the island."Dantzker said the oil impact on the island's massive bird colonies is by far the worst he has seen in the Gulf to date. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
July 15, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100715090643.htm | Hurricane Katrina's effects on children: Resilience and gender | Rebuilding schools after Hurricane Katrina and providing supportive environments and relationships have helped many children reduce their levels of overall trauma from the hurricane that devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005, according to a new study. A second study found that girls had distinct stress reactions from boys in the aftermath of the storm. | The studies appear in a special section on children and disaster in the July/August 2010 issue of the journal In a longitudinal study of recovery patterns of children affected by Katrina, researchers at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and the St. Bernard Parish Public Schools looked at 400 mostly White elementary- and high-school-aged children (from ages 9 to 18) between 2005 and 2008. The children lived in a New Orleans school district that was heavily damaged by the hurricane.When the researchers looked at the children two and three years after Katrina hit, they found that overall trauma symptoms (such as feeling depressed, sad, nervous, and having trouble concentrating and sleeping) had decreased. Furthermore, 45 percent of the children were found to be resistant to stress and lacked long-term psychological problems. The children's strengths, the researchers found, were largely the result of rebuilt schools (St. Bernard Parish reopened within 2-1/2 months of the hurricane) and supportive relationships (including the classmates students interacted with when they returned to school).But this work in progress also found that more than a quarter of the children continued to have significant trauma symptoms of post-traumatic stress and depression three years later. Children who reported these symptoms were more likely to be younger, female, have seen a mental health professional, and also report family or school problems. They also reported being exposed to more traumas.A second study on children affected by Katrina, conducted by researchers at the University of Missouri and The Pennsylvania State University, looked at the issue from the perspective of gender. Experiencing distress is a normal part of life, yet males and females have been found to show different patterns of stress reactions in laboratory studies.In this study, researchers looked at more than 60 teens (ages 12 to 19) who had been displaced by Katrina and were living in a government relocation camp with their families two months after the hurricane. Most of the participants were African American teens from low-income families that had lived in New Orleans. The researchers measured psychological functioning (such as depression and aggression) and two hormone markers of stress regulation (salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase), then compared these with more than 50 adolescents who were demographically similar but lived in a part of the United States that wasn't affected by Katrina.Male and female teens who experienced the hurricane showed distinct patterns of behavioral stress as well as gender differences in how they regulated physiological stress, the study found. Specifically, compared to the children who weren't exposed to Katrina, girls who survived the hurricane were more depressed and boys showed lower levels of aggression and higher levels of confidence. Heightened stress hormonal reactions were likewise associated with depression in girls and confidence in boys.In suggesting that males and females develop specialized systems for processing and responding to stress, the study adds to our understanding of normative stress regulation following trauma. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
July 14, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100713165053.htm | NASA's 3-D animation of Typhoon Conson's heavy rainfall and strong thunderstorms | Imagine seeing a typhoon from space, and seeing it in three dimensions. That's what the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite can do with any typhoon, and just did with Typhoon Conson. TRMM's 3-D look at tropical cyclones provide scientists with information on the height of towering thunderstorms and the rate of rainfall in them, and Conson has high thunderstorms and heavy rainfall. | The TRMM satellite got a good view of tropical storm Conson (known as "Basyang" in the Philippines) in the west Pacific Ocean as it passed directly overhead on July 12 at 1550 UTC (1:50 p.m. EDT/1:50 a.m. local time on July 13). TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR) and TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) data from the orbit were used when creating the rainfall analysis. That rainfall analysis showed intensifying tropical storm Conson was already very well organized. TRMM data clearly showed that an eye was forming with heavy thunderstorms located northeast of the storm's center of circulation. Those thunderstorms were dropping rainfall at a rate of almost 2 inches per hour.Hal Pierce of NASA's TRMM Team, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. created the 3-D animation of Typhoon Conson using data from July 12. In the animation, Pierce said that "The developing eye is shown reaching to heights above 15 kilometers (~9 miles)."There were also hot towers around Conson's eye. A hot tower is a tropical cumulonimbus cloud that punches through the tropopause and reaches into the stratosphere. They are called "hot towers" because they rise high due to the large amount of latent heat released as water vapor condenses into liquid and freezes into ice. Hot towers may appear when the hurricane is about to intensify, which is exactly what Conson did after the hot towers were seen by the TRMM satellite.The TRMM Precipitation Radar 3-D image showed that Conson was already a typhoon at 1550 UTC (1:50 p.m. EDT/1:50 a.m. local Asia/Manila time), which allowed forecasters to reclassify Conson from a tropical storm to a typhoon. TRMM Precipitation Radar revealed that the eye was already well formed indicating that Conson had reached typhoon status at that time.TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
July 14, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100713165019.htm | NASA releases GOES-13 satellite movie of the life and times of Hurricane Alex | NASA's GOES Project has just released a "movie" of satellite imagery showing the life and times of 2010's only June hurricane. From birth to death, the GOES-13 satellite kept an eye on the life and times of Hurricane Alex for two weeks in June, 2010. | Hurricane Alex struggled for life for two weeks in June 2010, and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) known as GOES-13 captured satellite images of the storm. Those satellite images were compiled into an animation by Dr. Dennis Chesters of NASA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The animation is an example of one of the tropical-storm-in-ten which bloom into a hurricane," Chesters said.GOES-13 is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and images are created by NASA's GOES Project, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.Satellites like GOES-13 provide a great research tool for forecasters by showing where and how a tropical depression forms and where it tracks during its brief lifetime. GOES-13 captured Alex from its birth on Friday, June 25 at 6 p.m. EDT when "System 93L" developed into the first tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season. At 5 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 26 that Tropical Depression One strengthened into a tropical storm and was named Alex. Tropical Storm Alex intensified by 11 p.m. EDT on June 29 and became the first hurricane of the 2010 Atlantic Ocean Hurricane Season.Alex made landfall at 10 p.m. EDT in northeastern Mexico, about 110 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. By 8 a.m. EDT on July 1, Alex has weakened to a tropical storm and GOES satellite imagery showed it moving near the high mountains of Mexico. GOES-13 satellite imagery followed Alex's remnants as they moved inland over northeastern Mexico and southern Texas in the days following.The first Atlantic Ocean basin hurricane of the season proved fatal to at least 30 people. Alex's heavy rainfall flooded towns, created mudslides, caused waterways to overflow and broke records.To access and download the movie: | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
July 12, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100711163358.htm | Surprisingly regular patterns in hurricane energy discovered | Researchers at the Mathematics Research Centre and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have discovered the mathematical relation between the number of hurricanes produced in certain parts of Earth and the energy they release. The distribution is valid for all series of hurricanes under study, independent of when and where they occurred. | The research, published in It is well known that there are fewer probabilities of a devastating hurricane developing than of a modest one. However, the exact relation between the number of hurricanes and energy released was not known until now. Researchers from the Mathematics Research Centre (CRM) and the Department of Physics of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have analysed data corresponding to tropical cyclones (generic name used for hurricanes) which have appeared in different parts of the planet between 1945 and 2007. Scientists have discovered that this relation corresponds to a power-law, a precise mathematical formula cyclones obey in a surprising manner, regardless of where on the planet and when they appear.This fundamental discovery has led researchers to more general conclusions on the behaviour of hurricanes. The first conclusion states that a hurricane's dynamics can be the result of a critical process, therefore making it impossible to predict its intensity. One of the aspects traditionally studied by organisations monitoring the danger of hurricanes is the prediction of their intensity, since this determines which alert and prevention systems are to be used in populated areas. Despite the efforts of scientists and resources invested, until now results have been very poor, although predictions on hurricane trajectory have improved considerably. The fact that hurricanes follow this power-law, as do other natural phenomena where large amounts of energy are released, e.g. earthquakes, questions the ability to predict the evolution of their intensity. In these types of processes, the dynamics behind large hurricanes are the same as those producing tropical storms of less importance and range. The way in which a small storm evolves and transforms into a catastrophic hurricane depends on whether the fluctuations amplifying the storm are stronger than those which tend to dissipate it. However, there is no specific aspect pointing to which will be the dominant fluctuations, since the system at that moment is in a critical situation, i.e. on the verge of either dissipating or growing.The second conclusion of the study is related to the effects of global warming on the behaviour of tropical cyclones: a recent increase in activities in the North Atlantic has shown to follow the same pattern as other high-activity periods in the past. Although there has been a dramatic increase in the number of hurricanes occurring in the North Atlantic since mid-1990s when compared to the period starting in the 1970s, the distribution of hurricanes in the 1950s was similar to today's activity level. Therefore, this increase cannot be explained solely on the basis of climate change. Even so, the research points to the existence of a relation between global warming and the distribution of tropical cyclones. The number of hurricanes is inversely proportional to the energy released, except for the highest values of energy, where the relation is suddenly interrupted. Researchers have observed that the cut-off point where the power-law does not represent the behaviour of hurricanes is influenced by factors such as average sea surface temperature and the El Niño phenomenon. Thus at a higher temperature, for example, the cut-off point rises to higher energy values.The research was carried out by Álvaro Corral, researcher at Mathematics Research Centre (consortium formed by the Institute of Catalan Studies and the Catalan Government, located at the UAB Research Park; CRM is also a CERCA center); Albert Ossó, UAB student in Physics; and Dr Josep Enric Llebot, professor at the UAB Department of Physics. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
July 11, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100709110626.htm | NASA to fly into hurricane research this summer | Three NASA aircraft will begin flights to study tropical cyclones on Aug. 15 during the agency's first major U.S.-based hurricane field campaign since 2001. The Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP, will study the creation and rapid intensification of hurricanes. Advanced instruments from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will be aboard two of the aircraft. | One of the major challenges in tropical cyclone forecasting is knowing when a tropical cyclone is going to form. Scientists will use the data from this six-week field mission to better understand how tropical storms form and develop into major hurricanes. Mission scientists will also be looking at how storms strengthen, weaken and die."This is really going to be a game-changing hurricane experiment," said Ramesh Kakar, GRIP program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "For the first time, scientists will be able to study these storms and the conditions that produce them for up to 20 hours straight. GRIP will provide a sustained, continuous look at hurricane behavior at critical times during their formation and evolution."GRIP is led by Kakar and three project scientists: Scott Braun and Gerry Heymsfield of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Edward Zipser of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.Three NASA satellites will play a key role in supplying data about tropical cyclones during the field mission. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM, managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will provide rainfall estimates and help pinpoint the locations of "hot towers" or powerhouse thunderstorms in tropical cyclones. The CloudSat spacecraft, developed and managed by JPL, will provide cloud profiles of storms, which include altitude, temperatures and rainfall intensity. Several instruments onboard NASA's Aqua satellite, including JPL's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), will provide infrared, visible and microwave data that reveal such factors as temperature, air pressure, precipitation, cloud ice content, convection and sea surface temperatures.The three NASA aircraft taking part in the mission are a DC-8, WB-57 and a remotely piloted Global Hawk. The DC-8 will fly out of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida. The WB-57 will be based at the NASA Johnson Space Center's Ellington Field in Houston. The Global Hawk will be piloted and based from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, in Palmdale, Calif., while flying for up to 20 hours in the vicinity of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.The aircraft will carry a total of 15 instruments, ranging from an advanced microwave sounder to dropsondes that take measurements as they fall through the atmosphere to the ocean surface. In order to determine how a tropical cyclone will behave, the instruments will analyze many factors including: cloud droplet and aerosol concentrations, air temperature, wind speed and direction in storms and on the ocean's surface, air pressure, humidity, lightning, aerosols, and water vapor. The data also will validate the observations from space.The JPL instruments include the High-Altitude Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR), flying aboard the Global Hawk; and the Airborne Precipitation Radar (APR-2), aboard the DC-8. HAMSR is a microwave atmospheric sounder that will be used to infer the 3-D distribution of temperature, water vapor and cloud liquid water in the atmosphere. It operates even in the presence of clouds. APR-2 is a dual-frequency weather radar that will take 3-D images of the precipitation beneath the DC-8 to measure its characteristics. These data will be used to infer rainfall rates, the location of ice and the speed of air updrafts, all of which are part of the atmospheric processes that provide a hurricane's energy."It was a lot of hard work to assemble the science team and the payload for the three aircraft for GRIP," Kakar said. "But now that the start of the field experiment is almost here, we can hardly contain our excitement."In addition to JPL, several other NASA field centers are involved in the mission, including Goddard; Johnson; Dryden; the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.; Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.; and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Centers provide scientists, instrument teams, project management or aircraft operations.GRIP mission planning is being coordinated with two separate hurricane airborne research campaigns that will be in the field at the same time. The National Science Foundation is sponsoring the PRE-Depression Investigation of Cloud-systems in the Tropics mission. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is conducting the Intensity Forecast Experiment 2010. These flights will be based in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands and Tampa, Fla.For more information about the GRIP field experiment, visit: | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
June 22, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100607192725.htm | Building to withstand hurricanes | Rima Taher, an expert in the design of low-rise buildings for extreme winds and hurricane, hopes her phone won't ring much this hurricane season. It's already been busy with requests for information about best building design and construction practices to reduce wind pressures on building surfaces. | In the aftermath of the January earthquake in Haiti, Taher, a civil and structural engineer at the NJIT College of Architecture and Design, prepared a document for Architecture for Humanity about best building practices for hurricane and earthquake-prone areas. It's posted on the organization's Haiti Reconstruction website and still circulates in Haiti. More recently, she cooperated with wind researchers at Tokyo Polytechnic University, Japan, to develop and translate from French a brochure for UNESCO to help Haitians prepare for the upcoming hurricane season. UNESCO will distribute the brochure in Haiti.In 2007 Taher's article about the design of low-rise buildings for extreme wind events appeared in the "Certain home shapes and roof types can make a big difference," is a common refrain in all her work.Her recommendations include the following. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
June 18, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100617120720.htm | Gulf oil spill: Mississippi River hydrology may help reduce oil onshore | The Gulf of Mexico: what role will the Mississippi River play in oil washing ashore and into delta wetlands? One of the spill's greatest environmental threats is to Louisiana's wetlands, scientists believe. But there may be good news ahead. | Scientists affiliated with the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED), a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center headquartered at the University of Minnesota, are using long-term field plots in Louisiana's Wax Lake Delta to measure the baseline conditions of, and track the effects of the oil spill on, coastal Louisiana wetlands.Robert Twilley and Guerry Holm of Louisiana State University (LSU) are investigating the degree to which two delta wetland characteristics may help mitigate oil contamination.Fresh water head, as it's called, the slope of the water's surface from a river delta to the sea, and residence time of river-mouth wetlands, the time it takes water to move through a wetland at a river's mouth, are important to understanding how delta wetlands will respond to the oil spill, say the researchers."Since the Mississippi River is currently at a relatively high stage, we expect the river's high volume of freshwater to act as a hydrologic barrier, keeping oil from moving into the Wax Lake Delta from the sea," says Twilley.Twilley and Holm are performing baseline and damage assessments on the plants and soils of, and comparing oil degradation processes in, freshwater and saltwater Louisiana wetlands."The Mississippi River's 'plumbing' provides a potential benefit to reducing the movement of oil onshore from shelf waters," says Twilley.The Mississippi's flow has been altered for flood control to protect people and infrastructure in this working delta.River diversion structures--concrete gates built within the levees of the river--may be operated, however, to allow water to flow to specific coastal basins and floodways, says Twilley, "as a way to provide controlled floods."The operational features of this system "downriver to the control structure near Venice, Louisiana," he says, "may provide a second line of defense against oil washing in."But any strategy using Mississippi River hydrology must be one of clear options and tradeoffs, says H. Richard Lane, program director in NSF's Division of Earth Sciences, which funds NCED."As the river stage falls and protection diminishes," says Lane, "it becomes a question of how best to distribute this freshwater resource to defend the coast from the movement of oil onshore."The answer, Twilley says, lies in the delicate balance of river, coastal and Gulf of Mexico processes "that must work in concert to benefit the incredible 'ecosystem services' this region provides to the nation."Louisiana wetlands "play a vital role in protecting New Orleans from hurricane damage, providing habitat for wildlife, supporting economically important fisheries, and maintaining water quality," says Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, director of NCED."We must look at all options for protecting them for the future."In addition to his NCED and LSU affiliations, Twilley is the recipient of an NSF rapid response oil spill grant. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
June 14, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100603155723.htm | 3-D models of BP oil spill in Gulf of Mexico made using ranger supercomputer | Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin's Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) are using the Ranger supercomputer to produce 3-D simulations of the impact of BP's massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill on coastal areas. | With an emergency allocation of one million computing hours from the National Science Foundation TeraGrid project, the researchers are running high resolution models of the Louisiana coast to track the oil spill through the complex marshes, wetlands and channels in the area.The researchers include Clint Dawson, professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics and head of the Computational Hydraulics Group at the university's Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences; Rick Luettich, professor of marine sciences and head of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill; and Joannes Westerink, professor of civil engineering at the University of Notre Dame.Dawson said he and his colleagues have access to highly accurate descriptions of the Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas coastlines due to earlier hurricane storm surge research."What our model can do that a lot of the other models can't do is track the oil spill up into the marshes and wetlands, because we have fine-scale resolution in those areas," he said.This kind of detail will help the scientists determine how the oil may spread in environmentally sensitive areas. The team's 2-D and 3-D coastal models also will take into account the Gulf of Mexico waves, which may bring the oil closer to the Texas coast.Of chief concern is the possibility that a hurricane moving through the gulf may bring the oil inland. The team hopes to be able to provide support for disaster responders who may need to make emergency management decisions based on the computer models.The primary reason for using Ranger is the massive scale of the data involved in this type of modeling and simulation. The researchers receive satellite imagery of the spill from the university's Center for Space Research and download meteorological data from the National Centers for Environmental Protection every six hours. They combine these data into a 72-hour forecast at 50-meter resolution, which is 10 to 20 times more detailed than many other models being run on the spill.TACC Director Jay Boisseau said this is one of many emergency response efforts for which TACC has provided computational power."Ranger gives us the ability to support an immense amount of computational research while reacting quickly to urgent needs such as hurricane predictions, swine flu outbreak scenarios and this oil spill," Boisseau said.For each model run, the Advanced Circulation Model for Oceanic, Coastal and Estuarine Waters simulation uses 4,096 cores on Ranger for three hours. The group has been performing between one and four simulations each day.Gordon Wells, program manager for real-time satellite remote sensing at the Center for Space Research, is a technology adviser for state emergency management efforts. He said he is optimistic that the 3-D models will show how the oil spill interacts with underwater vegetation and provide a more accurate forecast of the environmental impact the spill will have in the coming months. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
June 7, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100606213749.htm | NASA images show oil's invasion along Louisiana coast | New images, acquired on May 24, 2010 by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft, show the encroachment of oil from the former Deepwater Horizon rig into Louisiana's wildlife habitats. | The source of the spill is located off the southeastern (bottom right) edge of the images.Dark filaments of oil are seen approaching the shores of Blind Bay and Redfish Bay at the eastern edge of the Mississippi River delta, and also nearing Garden Island Bay and East Bay farther to the south. These areas are home to many varieties of fish. To the north, the arc-shaped pattern of land and runoff is associated with the Chandeleur Islands, which are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge is the second oldest in the United States and is a habitat for dozens of seabird, shorebird and waterfowl species. Oil is reported to have reached the islands on May 6. Eighteen days later, this image shows filaments of oil crossing the island barrier -- which had been heavily eroded by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 -- and entering the Breton and Chandeleur Sounds.The left-hand image contains data from MISR's vertical-viewing camera. It is shown in near-true color, except that data from the instrument's near-infrared band, where vegetation appears bright, have been blended with the instrument's green band to enhance the appearance of vegetation.The Mississippi River delta is located below the image center. The slick is seen approaching the delta from the lower right, and filaments of oil are also apparent farther to the north (towards the top). The oil is made visible by sun reflecting off the sea surface at the same angle from which the instrument is viewing it, a phenomenon known as sunglint. Oil makes the surface look brighter under these viewing conditions than it would if no oil were present. However, other factors can also cause enhanced glint, such as reduced surface wind speed. To separate glint patterns due to oil from these other factors, additional information from MISR's cameras is used in the right-hand image.Previous MISR imagery of the spill shows that the contrast of the oil against the surroundings is enhanced by using a combination of vertical views and oblique-angle views. The right-hand panel was constructed by combining data from several MISR channels. In this false-color view, oil appears in shades of inky blue to black; silt-laden water due to runoff from the Mississippi River shows up as orange, red and violet; and land and clouds appear in shades of cyan.The images cover an area measuring 110 by 119 kilometers (68 by 74 miles).Read more at | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
June 6, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100603193931.htm | Most kidney dialysis patients not prepared for emergency evacuation, study finds | Immediately after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, the survival of more than 5,800 Gulf Coast kidney dialysis patients was threatened as the storm forced closure of 94 dialysis units. Within a month 148 of these patients had died. | Now nearly five years later, a survey of North Carolina kidney dialysis patients by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine researchers finds that most have not taken the emergency preparedness measures that would enable them to survive a hurricane or any other disaster that disrupts power and water services. North Carolina ranks fourth among the states in hurricane landfalls, behind Florida, Texas and Louisiana."End stage kidney disease patients are dependent on medical treatment at regular intervals for their ongoing health, and, as such, are particularly vulnerable to the effects of a disaster. We found that patients on dialysis are largely unprepared for such an event, whether they are forced to stay in their homes or evacuate," said Mark Foster, lead author of the study.Foster, a UNC medical student, presented the results June 3 at the annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in Phoenix. His mentor in the project was Jane Brice, MD, MPH, associate professor of emergency medicine and medical director of Orange County EMS.Dialysis is a treatment for kidney failure. Dialysis filters the blood of harmful wastes, extra salt and water. Patients who need dialysis typically must go around 3 times a week to a dialysis facility that is equipped with dialysis machines and staffed by medical professionals. Dialysis machines require both electricity and sterile water, both of which may be unavailable for several days or even weeks in disaster-impacted areas. If dialysis cannot be provided for an end stage kidney disease patient, then toxic molecules and electrolytes will accumulate that can lead to a number of serious health problems, including death.In the survey, 311 dialysis patients receiving treatment at six regional dialysis centers in central North Carolina answered questions about their demographics, general disaster preparedness, dialysis-specific preparations for "sheltering in place" at home, and preparations for a forced evacuation.Both the general disaster preparedness and dialysis-specific preparedness of most respondents was poor, regardless of their sex, race, age, income or level of education.With regard to general disaster preparedness, 58 percent said they had enough bottled water at home to last for three days while 54 percent said they had enough food and water for three days. Forty-eight percent said they had 75 percent of the items on a disaster preparedness checklist recommended by the Department of Homeland Security while 38 percent said they had both food and water for three days and 75 percent of the checklist items. Only 31 percent said they had collected all of these items into a disaster preparation bag or kit, as this checklist recommends.In terms of dialysis-specific preparations, despite annual disaster preparedness education provided by the dialysis facilities, only 57 percent of patients understood what they needed to do for a renal emergency diet and only 6 percent had kayexalate, a drug used to treat increased amounts of potassium in the body, at home. Forty-three percent knew of other dialysis centers where they could get treatment if their current center was out of service and 42 percent said they had sufficient medical records at home with treatment information that they could provide to a new center.The study concludes that most survey respondents were unprepared for a potential disaster and therefore more efforts to address preparedness education techniques are warranted. The study authors note that the unpreparedness found in their study is in all likelihood not unique to North Carolina and is thought to be similar to the level of preparedness found among dialysis patients across the country.In addition to Foster and Brice, authors of the study were Maria Ferris, MD, MPH, PhD, director of UNC Health Care's pediatric renal dialysis program; Stephanie Principe, an undergraduate student at Davidson University; Frances Shofer, PhD, director of research in the Department of Emergency Medicine; and Ronald J. Falk, MD, division chief of nephrology and hypertension and director of the UNC Kidney Center.The study was funded by a training grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
June 4, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100602103158.htm | NASA takes to the air with new 'Earth Venture' research projects | Hurricanes, air quality and Arctic ecosystems are among the research areas to be investigated during the next five years by new NASA airborne science missions announced recently. | The five competitively-selected proposals, including one from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are the first investigations in the new Venture-class series of low-to-moderate-cost projects established last year.The Earth Venture missions are part of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program. The small, targeted science investigations complement NASA's larger research missions. In 2007, the National Research Council recommended that NASA undertake these types of regularly solicited, quick-turnaround projects.This year's selections are all airborne investigations. Future Venture proposals may include small, dedicated spacecraft and instruments flown on other spacecraft."I'm thrilled to be able to welcome these new principal investigators into NASA's Earth Venture series," said Edward Weiler, associate administrator of the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "These missions are considered a 'tier 1' priority in the National Research Council's Earth Science decadal survey. With this selection, NASA moves ahead into this exciting type of scientific endeavor."The missions will be funded during the next five years at a total cost of not more than $30 million each. The cost includes initial development and deployment through analysis of data. Approximately $10 million was provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act toward the maximum $150 million funding ceiling for the missions.Six NASA centers, 22 educational institutions, nine U.S. or international government agencies and three industrial partners are involved in these missions. The five missions were selected from 35 proposals.The selected missions are:1. Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment. Principal Investigator Charles Miller, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.The release and absorption of carbon from Arctic ecosystems and its response to climate change are not well known because of a lack of detailed measurements. This investigation will collect an integrated set of data that will provide unprecedented experimental insights into Arctic carbon cycling, especially the release of important greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Instruments will be flown on a Twin Otter aircraft to produce the first simultaneous measurements of surface characteristics that control carbon emissions and key atmospheric gases.2. Airborne Microwave Observatory of Subcanopy and Subsurface. Principal Investigator Mahta Moghaddam, University of MichiganNorth American ecosystems are critical components of the global exchange of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and other gases within the atmosphere. To better understand the size of this exchange on a continental scale, this investigation addresses the uncertainties in existing estimates by measuring soil moisture in the root zone of representative regions of major North American ecosystems. Investigators will use NASA's Gulfstream-III aircraft to fly synthetic aperture radar that can penetrate vegetation and soil to depths of several feet.3. Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment. Principal Investigator Eric Jensen, NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.Water vapor in the stratosphere has a large impact on Earth's climate, the ozone layer and how much solar energy Earth retains. To improve our understanding of the processes that control the flow of atmospheric gases into this region, investigators will launch four airborne campaigns with NASA's Global Hawk remotely piloted aerial systems. The flights will study chemical and physical processes at different times of year from bases in California, Guam, Hawaii and Australia.4. Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality. Principal Investigator James Crawford, NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.Satellites can measure air quality factors like aerosols and ozone-producing gases in an entire column of atmosphere below the spacecraft, but distinguishing the concentrations at the level where people live is a challenge. This investigation will provide integrated data of airborne, surface and satellite observations, taken at the same time, to study air quality as it evolves throughout the day. NASA's B-200 and P-3B research aircraft will fly together to sample a column of the atmosphere over instrumented ground stations.5. Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel. Principal Investigator Scott Braun, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.The prediction of the intensity of hurricanes is not as reliable as predictions of the location of hurricane landfall, in large part because of our poor understanding of the processes involved in intensity change. This investigation focuses on studying hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean basin using two NASA Global Hawks flying high above the storms for up to 30 hours. The Hawks will deploy from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the 2012 to 2014 Atlantic hurricane seasons."These new investigations, in concert with NASA's Earth-observing satellite capabilities, will provide unique new data sets that identify and characterize important phenomena, detect changes in the Earth system and lead to improvements in computer modeling of the Earth system," said Jack Kaye, associate director for research of NASA's Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate.Langley manages the Earth System Pathfinder program for the Science Mission Directorate. The missions in this program provide an innovative approach to address Earth science research with periodic windows of opportunity to accommodate new scientific priorities. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
June 2, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100601162322.htm | Unique computer model used to predict active 2010 hurricane season | Florida State University scientists who have developed a unique computer model with a knack for predicting hurricanes with unprecedented accuracy are forecasting an unusually active season this year. | Associate Scholar Scientist Tim LaRow and his colleagues at FSU's Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) say there will be an average of 17 named storms with 10 of those storms developing into hurricanes in the Atlantic this season, which begins June 1, and runs through Nov. 30. The historical seasonal average is 11 tropical storms with six of them becoming hurricanes."It looks like it will be a very busy season, and it only takes one hurricane making landfall to have devastating effects," LaRow said. "The predicted high number of tropical systems means there is an increased chance that the eastern United States or Gulf Coast will see a landfall this year."The COAPS model, unveiled just last year, is one of only a handful of numerical models in the world being used to study seasonal hurricane activity, and it has already outperformed many other models. The model uses the university's high-performance computer to synthesize massive amounts of information including atmospheric, ocean and land data. A key component of the COAPS model is the use of predicted sea surface temperatures.The 2009 forecast, the model's first, was on target: It predicted a below-average season, with a mean of eight named storms with four of them developing into hurricanes. There were nine named storms with three that became hurricanes.The model's 2009 forecast, plus its hindcasts of the previous 14 hurricane seasons -- that's when the data that existed prior to each season is plugged into the model to reforecast the season and then compared to what actually occurred -- really show the model's precision. From 1995 to 2009, the model predicted a mean of 13.7 named storms of which a mean of 7.8 were hurricanes. In reality, the average during this period was 13.8 named storms with a mean of 7.9 hurricanes.How the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will affect the development of tropical storms this year is a question that scientists are still trying to figure out, LaRow said. The oil on the ocean surface can diminish the amount of surface evaporation, which would lead to local increased ocean temperatures near the surface, but LaRow said he's made no adjustments to the model to account for the oil that continues to gush from an underwater well."The oil spill will probably have little influence on the hurricane season, but we don't know for sure since this spill is unprecedented," he said. "It's uncertain how exactly the atmospheric and oceanic conditions might change if the spill continues to grow."COAPS researchers spent about five years developing and assessing the numerical model before putting it to the test with its first real-time forecast last year. Numerical models require major computing resources in order to make trillions of calculations using the equations of motion along with the best physical understanding of the atmosphere. By contrast, statistical models, such as the one that produces Colorado State University's annual forecast, use statistical relationships between oceanic and atmospheric variables to make a forecast.COAPS received a $6.2 million, five-year grant from NOAA in 2006 that has been used, in part, to support the development of the model. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
May 31, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100530212148.htm | NOAA expects busy Atlantic hurricane season | An "active to extremely active" hurricane season is expected for the Atlantic Basin this year according to the seasonal outlook issued by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center -- a division of the National Weather Service. As with every hurricane season, this outlook underscores the importance of having a hurricane preparedness plan in place. | Across the entire Atlantic Basin for the six-month season, which begins June 1, NOAA is projecting a 70 percent probability of the following ranges:"If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record," said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. "The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall. In short, we urge everyone to be prepared."The outlook ranges exceed the seasonal average of 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes. Expected factors supporting this outlook are:"The main uncertainty in this outlook is how much above normal the season will be. Whether or not we approach the high end of the predicted ranges depends partly on whether or not La Niña develops this summer," said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. "At present we are in a neutral state, but conditions are becoming increasingly favorable for La Niña to develop.""FEMA is working across the administration and with our state and local partners to ensure we're prepared for hurricane season," said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. "But we can only be as prepared as the public, so it's important that families and businesses in coastal communities take steps now to be ready. These include developing a communications plan, putting together a kit, and staying informed of the latest forecasts and local emergency plans. You can't control when a hurricane or other emergency may happen, but you can make sure you're ready."The president recently designated May 23-29, 2010, as National Hurricane Preparedness Week. NOAA and FEMA encourage those living in hurricane-prone states to use this time to review their overall preparedness. More information on individual and family preparedness can be found at NOAA scientists will continue to monitor evolving conditions in the tropics and will issue an updated hurricane outlook in early August, just prior to what is historically the peak period for hurricane activity. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
May 31, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100530212100.htm | NOAA predicts below normal Eastern Pacific hurricane season | NOAA's National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center has announced that projected climate conditions point to a below normal hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific this year. The outlook calls for a 75 percent probability of a below normal season, a 20 percent probability of a near normal season and a five percent probability of an above normal season. | Allowing for forecast uncertainties, seasonal hurricane forecasters estimate a 70 percent chance of 9 to 15 named storms, which includes 4 to 8 hurricanes, of which 1 to 3 are expected to become major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale).An average Eastern Pacific hurricane season produces 15 to 16 named storms, with nine becoming hurricanes and four to five becoming major hurricanes. The Eastern Pacific hurricane season runs from May 15 through Nov. 30, with peak activity from July through September.The main climate factors influencing this year's Eastern Pacific outlook are the atmospheric conditions that have decreased hurricane activity over the Eastern Pacific Ocean since 1995 -- and the fact that El Niño has faded."La Niña is becoming increasingly likely, which further raises the chance of a below-normal season for the Eastern Pacific region," said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.The outlook is a general guide to the overall seasonal hurricane activity. It does not predict whether, where or when any of these storms may hit land.Eastern Pacific tropical storms most often track westward over open waters, sometimes reaching Hawaii and beyond. However, some occasionally head toward the northeast and may bring rainfall to the arid southwestern United States during the summer months. Also, during any given season, two to three tropical storms can affect western Mexico or Central America. Residents, businesses and government agencies of coastal and near-coastal regions should always prepare prior to each and every hurricane season regardless of the seasonal hurricane outlook. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
May 27, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100526141852.htm | Undersea forces from hurricanes may threaten Gulf pipelines | Hurricanes could snap offshore oil pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico and other hurricane-prone areas, since the storms whip up strong underwater currents, a new study suggests. | These pipelines could crack or rupture unless they are buried or their supporting foundations are built to withstand these hurricane-induced currents. "Major oil leaks from damaged pipelines could have irreversible impacts on the ocean environment," the researchers warn in their study, to be published on 10 June in With the official start of hurricane season approaching on June 1, news reports about the Deep Horizon oil spill that began fouling the Gulf last month have raised questions about how a hurricane might complicate the unfolding disaster.A hurricane might also create its own spills, the new research indicates. The storms' powerful winds can raise waves 20 meters (66 feet) or more above the ocean surface. But their effects underwater are little known, although signs of seafloor damage have showed up after some hurricanes.Based on unique measurements taken directly under a powerful hurricane, the new study's calculations are the first to show that hurricanes propel underwater currents with enough oomph to dig up the seabed, potentially creating underwater mudslides and damaging pipes or other equipment resting on the bottom.At least 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles) of pipelines reportedly snake across the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico. Damage to these pipelines can be difficult to detect if it causes only smaller leaks, rather than a catastrophic break, the researchers say. Repairing underwater pipes can cost more than fixing the offshore oil drilling platforms themselves, making it all the more important to prevent damage to pipelines in the first place.The researchers, at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi, got an unprecedented view of a hurricane when Hurricane Ivan, a category-4 storm, crossed the Gulf of Mexico in 2004. The eye of the storm passed over a network of sensors on the ocean floor, put in place to monitor currents along the continental shelf in the Gulf.The research team found that strong currents along the sea floor pushed and pulled on the seabed, scouring its surface. "Usually you only see this in very shallow water, where waves break on the beach, stirring up sand," says David Wang, co-author of the study. "In hurricanes, the much bigger waves can stir up the seafloor all the way down to 90 meters [300 feet]."Ivan's waves on the surface created powerful currents that dug up the seafloor. Acoustic measurements using sound waves showed that these currents lofted a lot of sediments, which clouded the water up to 25 meters (82 feet) above the seafloor. The team's seafloor sensors tracking the pressure underwater experienced a big increase, as well. This showed that the ground was washed away beneath the sensors, causing them to sink into a lower, higher-pressure zone.Using a computer model of wave-induced current stresses, the team estimated how powerful currents would need to be for forces they exert at the sea floor to exceed a "critical force" that triggers sediment suspensions and could lead to underwater mudslides.According to these estimates, hurricanes considerably weaker than Ivan, which was category-4, could still tear up the seafloor, causing significant damage as deep as 90 meters.The researchers were surprised by how long the destructive currents persisted after Hurricane Ivan passed by. "The stress on the sea floor lasted nearly a week," says Hemantha Wijesekera, lead author of the study. "It doesn't go away, even after the hurricane passes."The researchers say they're not sure what strengths of forces underwater oil pipelines are built to withstand. However, "hurricane stress is quite large, so the oil industry better pay attention," Wijesekera says.The Office of Naval Research funded this study. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
May 26, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100526095656.htm | Major hurricane could devastate Houston | With the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season less than a week away, a new analysis from experts at several Texas universities is warning that a major hurricane could devastate the Houston/Galveston region. A report issued by the Rice University-based Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters Center (SSPEED) indicates that even a moderately powerful hurricane could endanger tens of thousands of lives and cripple the Houston Ship Channel, which is home to about one-quarter of U.S. refineries. | SSPEED's report was unveiled May 27 at the 2010 Coastal Resilience Symposium, a one-day workshop at Rice that brought together regional, national and international experts to discuss how the Houston region can be made more resilient to severe storm impacts."There are warning signs across the board," said SSPEED Director Phil Bedient, Rice's Herman Brown Professor of Engineering and a co-author of the new report. "Ike was a Category 2 hurricane, and it caused $30 billion in damage. Had that same storm struck 30 miles farther south, it could easily have caused $100 billion in damage. Had it struck that location as a Category 4 storm, like Carla, the results would have been catastrophic."The new report comes from an ongoing two-year study commissioned from SSPEED in 2009 by the nonprofit Houston Endowment. SSPEED has assembled a team of more than a dozen leading experts from Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, the University of Houston, Texas Southern University and several other institutions to examine flood risks, evacuation readiness, industrial vulnerability and both structural and nonstructural approaches for mitigating storm impact.SSPEED's report indicates:Bedient said one need look no further than the Houston Ship Channel to get a clear sense of the region's vulnerability. The ship channel is home to one of the nation's busiest ports and about one-quarter of U.S. refineries. The Coast Guard estimates a one-month closure of a major port like Houston would cost the national economy $60 billion.Despite this, government regulations require dikes and levees that can protect ship channel facilities against only the 100-year flood of 14-15 feet. Bedient said that based upon results from supercomputer models at the University of Texas, Austin, Ike could have caused a 20- to 25-foot storm surge along the ship channel if it had struck about 30 miles farther south."Our team is taking an in-depth, scientific look at structural proposals like the Ike Dike and other dike solutions, as well as nonstructural proposals related to land use," said Rice's Jim Blackburn, professor in the practice of environmental law and co-author of the new report. "Our work so far has revealed a number of different structural and nonstructural solutions. There are dozens of communities along the coast, and each is unique in some way. We are attempting to identify the most cost-effective and environmentally acceptable methods of providing a basic level of protection, including both structural barriers and nonstructural approaches that take advantage of natural features like barrier islands and storm-surge storage in wetlands."Blackburn said SSPEED's goal is to propose policy options to decision makers at the state, local and federal level with an unbiased assessment of the economic and environmental costs and benefits of all approaches so that an informed decision on the future of the region can be made."And make no mistake about it -- the solutions that are chosen to deal with this flood-surge problem will determine the landscape of the future for the upper Texas coast," Blackburn said. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
May 15, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100513212429.htm | New research reveals Hurricane Katrina's impact on ecological and human health | Scientists studying the environmental impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans have revealed the ecological impact and human health risks from exposure to chemical contaminants. The findings, published in a special issue of | The research reveals how chemical concentrations across coastal areas varied, but within New Orleans elevated concentrations of lead, arsenic and other chemicals were found, particularly in the most disadvantaged areas of the city following Hurricane Katrina. The team also discovered how airborne contaminants known to pose health risks, were released through demolition projects during the city-wide cleanup operation."While evidence suggests that hurricanes may increase in intensity, resulting in even greater economic damage in the future, social and cultural factors are also important aspects to consider for the future impact of hurricanes," said Dr. Bill Benson of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). "It is important that higher priority is given to understanding social factors and demographic patterns pertaining to continued development along our nation's coastline."Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans in August 2005, remains one of the costliest and deadliest hurricane ever to hit the United States. When the hurricane hit land, the resulting surge extended six miles inland, breaching the levees of New Orleans and causing flooding to 80 percent of the city to depths of six meters.In human terms Katrina resulted in 1,800 confirmed fatalities spread over six states with at least 700 people confirmed missing and an additional one million people displaced. Katrina-related damage is estimated to exceed $84 billion, making it the most expensive natural disaster in US history. Yet it is the indirect environmental impact that continues to pose a risk to the population of New Orleans.To discover the impact of chemical contamination Dr. George Cobb from Texas Tech University led a team to study 128 sampling sites from across the city, combining their findings with data sets generated by Dr. Burton Suedel and co-workers with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Maps were then compiled from the resulting data to reveal chemical distribution across the city.Elevated concentrations of arsenic and lead were demonstrated to exist throughout New Orleans with the highest concentrations observed in soils from the poorer sections of the city. The team also discovered that lead concentrations exceed the regulatory threshold for safety, with the highest concentrations found in the oldest parts of the city. Lead in soil poses a significant risk to residents who returned to their homes following the evacuation, especially children.While the team's findings indicated that levels of lead frequently exceed regulatory thresholds, further research showed that many of the contaminants were present in high concentrations before the storm season and that lead may have posed a significant risk to New Orleans residents for years before Hurricane Katrina.The results also revealed elevated concentrations of arsenic in surface soils and flood sediments across New Orleans, caused by sediment deposition or from flooded building materials."Our evaluation of contaminants in New Orleans was critical in determining whether storm surges and resultant flooding altered chemical concentrations or distribution," concluded Cobb. "Our results show how long-term human health consequences in New Orleans are difficult to attribute to chemical deposition or redistribution by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, yet reveal how chemical contamination is a historical problem for old cites in the U.S. Our results and the data from coastal ecosystems reveal the value of long-term monitoring programs to establish baseline concentrations and distributions of contaminants in the environment." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
May 5, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100505133300.htm | 'Oil spill, flooding create perfect storm' for commerce, shipping, says supply chain professor | The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and epic flooding in Tennessee have created a "perfect storm" for businesses that rely on an efficient supply chain, according to a University of Rhode Island professor. | In addition, the volcano in Iceland is causing unprecedented interruptions in the ability of businesses in Europe and the Baltic regions to ship goods via air transport, said Douglas Hales, associate professor of operations and supply chain management in URI's College of Business Administration.In New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities the impacts of the spill may only be beginning."Seventy percent of the coffee shipped to the United States goes through the Port of New Orleans," Hales said.He would expect coffee prices to escalate if a solution is not found soon.Large freighter ships can move through oil slicks, but Hales said protective booms must be moved and the ships themselves will drag oil with them. While the booms are moved, oil can move closer to the coastline."It's not easy to re-route these huge vessels," Hales said. "Traffic is still moving in and out of the Port of New Orleans because the heaviest slicks haven't reached there yet."However, he added that smaller recreational boats and those used for commercial fishing and touring cannot operate in the slick because they will draw oil-contaminated water into their engines."The old paddleboats based in the Mississippi Delta will have to cease operations, too."It's going to be over for recreational and commercial fishing within the next few weeks if the spill is not stopped," Hales said. "Crude oil is like tar. The most efficient thing to do would be to burn the oil, since many of the dispersion agents in use are extremely toxic. It's either that, or let it spread to the beaches. Of course, a nasty cloud would be produced from the burning, which could also affect air quality and tourism throughout the Gulf."Hales said it is important to remember that New Orleans is still down 200,000 to 250,000 residents in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The impending oil catastrophe could lead to further flight as jobs are lost and people default on their businesses and homes.Further north and east, Tennessee is reeling from heavy flooding. Hales said closures of Interstate 24, a major route for transportation of products from the south to northern Midwest states like Wisconsin and Michigan, have had a major impact."I would estimate that $3 to $5 million per day in freight operations have been lost because of closures on 24," Hales said. "Combined with severe cold weather in the south earlier this year, you have to expect prices to increase on products like orange juice coming out of Florida."While the volcano in Iceland has grown more active in the last four days, Hales said most of the summer goods transported by air made it into the United States and Europe before the huge ash cloud interrupted passenger and freight flights. However, the airspace over Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was closed Monday because of concerns that ash would drift into the area.Hales said the airlines are estimating that the ash cloud caused $2 billion in passenger traffic interruption, but the interruption in airfreight traffic was probably two to three times that amount. Hales said there is a robust high tech industry in Ireland and Northern Europe that have to cope with another two to three days of shipping time. That's a huge amount of time when the high tech industry rolls out new products every three to six months. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
April 22, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100421213706.htm | Katrina storm surge led to over 200 onshore releases of petroleum and hazardous materials, rivaling Exxon Valdez oil spill | Scientists call for more risk-based facility design and improved prevention, response planning Hurricane Katrina was the cause of more than 200 onshore releases of petroleum and other hazardous materials, a new study funded by the National Science Foundation has found. | According to comprehensive research using government incident databases, about 8 million gallons of petroleum releases were reported as a result of Katrina hitting the U.S. Gulf coast in 2005, nearly 75 percent of the total volume of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. The releases were largely due to storage tank failure and the shut down and restart of production processes. Storm surge floods were the primary cause, but some incidents occurred as a result of hurricane and tropical storm strength winds where no surge was present, according to the authors.The study appears in the April issue of the journal The authors include consultant Nicholas Santella, Laura Steinberg of Syracuse University, and Hatice Sengul of the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council. Ten onshore releases of petroleum products were greater than 10,000 gallons each, primarily made up of crude oil that leaked from storage tanks. Fewer and smaller releases were reported from chemical and manufacturing industries handling hazardous materials. Of the releases from onshore facilities and storage tanks, 76 percent were petroleum, 18 percent were chemicals and six percent were natural gas. Many refineries and other facilities shut down in anticipation of large storms to minimize damage and prevent process upsets and are required to do so for safety purposes. However, shutdowns and restarts have the disadvantage of leading to potentially large emissions of volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and other chemicals."More attention should be given to planning for shutdowns, including coordination with government entities responsible for evacuation, and to plant startup after an emergency shutdown in order to minimize burning off excess gas by flaring and other releases," according to the authors. For example, storage tanks can be filled with water and other steps can be taken to mitigate damage during severe storms and floods."Where large releases do occur, in-depth analysis by each plant of mechanism of failure and contributing factors should be required," the authors add. Significant factors slowing response to the Katrina damage included indirect disruptions, such as displacement of workers, loss of electricity and communication systems, and difficulty acquiring supplies and contractors for operations and reconstruction. Of industrial facilities responding to a survey in the study, 55 percent experienced indirect disruptions, far more than had environmental releases of hazardous materials, indicating improved risk-based facility design and improved prevention and response planning may be warranted."Chemical accident prevention and emergency response regulations in the US and elsewhere generally do not address the threat of natural hazards directly. While many companies are proactive in taking steps to mitigate natural hazard risk, others may make only the minimum effort require by statute," the authors conclude. The study is the first to comprehensively analyze the incidence and causes of releases from all types of onshore industrial facilities as a result of Hurricane Katrina. The analysis relies on the key incident reporting databases of the National Response Center (NRC) Incident Reporting Information System (IRIS) administered by the U.S. Coast Guard. In addition, interviews and data were obtained from federal and Gulf state environmental agencies, energy and chemical associations, public accounts of particular incidents, and a small industry survey. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
April 16, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100416185153.htm | GOES-13 is America's new GOES-EAST satellite | The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite known as GOES-13 became the official GOES-EAST satellite on April 14, 2010. GOES-13 was moved from on-orbit storage and into active duty. It is perched 22,300 miles above the equator to spot potentially life-threatening weather, including tropical storm activity in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. | "Just in time for the 2010 hurricane season, NOAA will have one of its newest, technologically advanced satellites closely tracking these storms -- from when they develop to when they dissipate," said Mary Kicza, assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Satellite and Information Service in Silver Spring, Md.NASA's GOES Project, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., procures and manages the development and launch of the GOES series of satellites for NOAA on a cost-reimbursable basis. NASA's GOES Project also creates some of the GOES satellite images and GOES satellite imagery animations. NOAA manages the operational environmental satellite program and establishes requirements, provides all funding and distributes environmental satellite data for the United States."It is exciting to think that we are now putting into service the best satellites this country has to offer," said Andre' Dress, GOES N-P NASA Deputy Project Manager, at Goddard. "We are really looking forward to see the increase in performance over the older satellites and the improvements in weather prediction."There are two GOES satellites that cover weather conditions in the U.S. and they are positioned over the eastern and western U.S. The satellite in the GOES EAST position covers weather on the eastern side of the continental U.S., including the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The GOES WEST position covers the western half of the U.S. and the Eastern Pacific Ocean.GOES-13 has now replaced GOES-12, which NOAA is shifting in orbit to provide coverage for South America, as part of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems, or GEOSS. GOES-11 continues to occupy the GOES-WEST position.Initially known as the GOES-N satellite, it was renamed GOES-13 when it achieved geosynchronous orbit. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. at 6:11 p.m. EDT on May 24, 2006 aboard a Boeing Delta IV rocket.GOES-13 is the first of three new NOAA geostationary environmental satellites. The other two in the new series are GOES-14, launched in June 2009 and now in orbital storage, and GOES-15, launched on March 4, 2010, and undergoing tests before completing its "check-out" phase, scheduled to be complete in August 2010.Since the first GOES launch in 1974, these satellites have supplied the data critical for fast, accurate weather forecasts and warnings. The newer GOES series of satellites help relay distress signals from emergency beacons, and are equipped to monitor solar activity, which can impact billions of dollars worth of government and commercial assets in space and on the ground.NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.For more information about NASA's GOES Program visit: | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
March 11, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311123526.htm | Survey shows lack of confidence in national hurricane response planning | According to a study recently completed by an LSU group charged with conducting studies on improving hurricane crisis communication in coastal communities, many families have a well-developed hurricane response plan of their own but have little faith in the preparation developed at higher government levels. | Titled "Hurricanes, Institutional Procedures, and Information Processing, or HIPIP: Engagement with Decision-Makers and Coastal Residents," the project contains two distinct studies on the topic, both designed to create more effective hurricane communication among forecasters, government officials, media representatives and ultimately the public."Clearly, the perceived inadequacy of the federal response to Katrina still lingers in the minds of many residents," said David Brown, HPIP investigator and assistant professor in LSU's Department of Geography and Anthropology.The telephone survey of more than 500 southeastern Louisiana residents was conducted by LSU's Public Policy Research Lab, or PPRL, in October and November of 2009 found 57 percent of those surveyed believe their town or parish has a well-developed plan; 62 percent believe the state does; but only 30 percent believe the federal government has one.The good news is that a substantial number of residents, 80 percent, have a well-developed plan for hurricane season of their own."It is encouraging that the vast majority of respondents have some kind of hurricane plan," said Brown. "This demonstrates recognition that hurricane preparation needs to be taken seriously at the household level."Sixty percent of the respondents also believe that the hurricane protection systems such as levees, warning systems and pumps are better than before Katrina, while 20 percent of the respondents have "no confidence" in them and believe they offer "no protection" to Louisiana.The telephone survey was the second phase of a $130,000 grant from the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, or MASGC. The studies were designed to create more effective hurricane communication among forecasters, government officials, media representatives and ultimately the public, including insights into why some residents choose to evacuate while others do not.Final results of the project will be released in April and will include "best practices" for improving risk communication in coastal communities, focusing on Louisiana parishes east of the Mississippi.LSU Department of Communication Studies Professor and Chair Renee Edwards leads the HPIP project. In addition to Edwards and Brown, other co-investigators include Assistant Professor Stephanie Grey, also of communication studies, and Associate Professor Andrea Miller of the Manship School of Mass Communication. Mark Cooper, director of the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, is the grant's community partner.The MASGC, created in 1972, is one of 30 National Sea Grant College Programs administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. The consortium members include Auburn University, Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, The University of Alabama, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, The University of Southern Mississippi and the University of South Alabama. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
February 25, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224165225.htm | More tropical cyclones in past could play role in warmer future | More frequent tropical cyclones in Earth's ancient past contributed to persistent El Niño-like conditions, according to a team of climate scientists led by Yale University. Their findings, which appear in the Feb. 25 issue of the journal | The team used both cyclone and climate models to study the frequency and distribution of tropical cyclones (also known as hurricanes or typhoons) during the Pliocene epoch, a period three to five million years ago when temperatures were up to four degrees Celsius warmer than today.The team found that there were twice as many tropical cyclones during this period, that they lasted two to three days longer on average than they do now, and that, unlike today, they occurred across the entire tropical Pacific Ocean."The Pliocene is the best analog we have in the past for what could happen in our future," said Christopher Brierley, a Yale postdoctoral associate and an author of the study. "We wondered whether all these storms could have contributed to the warmer climate."In fact, the team discovered a positive feedback cycle between tropical cyclones and upper-ocean circulation in the Pacific that explains the increase in storms and appears to have led to permanent El Niño-like conditions.Today, cold water originating off the coasts of California and Chile skirts around the region of tropical cyclone activity on its way to the Equator, where it results in a "cold tongue" that stretches west off the coast of South America. During the Pliocene, however, the team found that this cold water could not avoid being hit by one of the many tropical cyclones, which would churn up and mix warmer water into it. This warming at the Equator led to changes in the atmosphere that in turn created more tropical storms -- and the cycle would repeat.The team hopes to study how much mixing could result from tropical cyclones in today's ocean waters -- something that is hard to incorporate in global climate models, said Alexey Fedorov, an associate professor at Yale and lead author of the paper.Fedorov cautioned that there is not necessarily a direct link between what happened during the Pliocene and what might happen in the future, as the team's results for this epoch differed in many respects from current projections for future global warming. For example, the existing consensus is that, while the number of intense hurricanes will increase, the overall number will actually decrease."However, unless we understand the causes of these differences, we will not be sure whether our projections are correct," Fedorov said. "Changes in the frequency and distribution of these storms could be a significant component of future climate conditions."Other authors of this paper include Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Funding for this study was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Science, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
February 4, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100201145443.htm | Haiti earthquake a reminder that disasters are preventable, expert says | Amid all the commentary focused on the historic tragedy in Haiti, a tough but important fact has gone virtually unmentioned, according to a nationally recognized expert on disasters at the University of Colorado at Boulder. | "What is missing from the tragedy of disaster, and our response to it, is the recognition that disasters are preventable, that it is within the power of societies and communities to prevent or at least minimize the devastation disasters cause," said Kathleen Tierney, director of CU-Boulder's Natural Hazards Center. "We mourn the human toll of disasters, but collectively we do far too little to minimize their impacts."The pervasive view of disasters is that they are inevitable, said Tierney, who also is a professor of sociology. They are viewed as acts of God, acts of nature or just random, tragic events.But while earthquakes are inevitable in earthquake zones, and hurricanes and tornadoes are inevitable under certain weather conditions -- "there are no inevitable disasters," she said. "There is no such thing as a natural disaster."The city of Port-au-Prince increased in size and population with virtually no attention given to the fact that it's in a seismic area, located on a boundary between two continental plates, she said. No effort was made to make buildings seismic-resistant. No restrictions were placed on where or how homes were built. Many homes were built on hillsides susceptible to landslides.All of these conditions are either tied to or made worse by the extreme poverty in Haiti, Tierney said. Eighty percent of the population lives in poverty and the country was still recovering from four hurricanes that hit the country in 2008 when this year's earthquake struck."The Haiti government can't provide for daily needs, much less a disaster," Tierney said.But there are steps that can and should be taken now to make Haiti more disaster-resistant, she said, noting that the country faces continued risks from aftershocks, landslides and another hurricane season starting in June. She hopes that the international donor community will put preventive measures in place as a condition of providing disaster assistance.For example, hillsides in Haiti should not be developed and the badly damaged port of Port-au-Prince should be rebuilt to standards that will enable it to withstand the next earthquake and the next hurricane, she said. Implementation of good emergency management practices and the engagement of Haitian communities in planning for future disasters also is essential."Societies create disasters of the future by decisions they make or don't make -- by how they live with nature," Tierney said.Fields such as urban planning provide sound insights on land-use and urban development strategies that can keep people, buildings and infrastructure out of harm's way, she said. Architects and engineers understand how to employ hazard-resistant design and construction practices. Building codes can prevent structures from collapsing.It also is known how to design emergency management systems that will perform effectively when disaster strikes and how to educate people in ways that will help protect them from natural and technological hazards, she said. Laws, ordinances and other measures also can save lives, protect property and speed the recovery process after disasters."We do not lack the knowledge to prevent disasters," Tierney said. "What we lack is the foresight and political will to do so. The United States and other countries have not yet learned the lesson that disasters are preventable and that today's investments in prevention reduce tomorrow's suffering."The Natural Hazards Center is part of CU-Boulder's Institute of Behavioral Science and is funded by a consortium of agencies including the National Science Foundation and FEMA. For more information visit the center's Web site at | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
January 27, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127085546.htm | Forensic analysis of Hurricane Katrina's impact: Methods and findings | A recent special edition of the Elsevier journal | Hurricane Katrina was the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history. Katrina's size was larger than most hurricanes, and its storm surge affected the greatest area, nearly 93,000 square miles. Katrina's winds and storm surge overwhelmed the protective infrastructure in and around the city of New Orleans, flooding nearly 80 percent of the city.Between September 2005 and September 2006, an Interagency Performance Evaluation Task (IPET) force, consisting of inter-government agencies, academics and private industry contributors, conducted a study that analyzed the performance of flood protection systems, following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina throughout the coastal areas of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Texas.The Guest Editors of this special issue of Guest Editor Zeki Demirbilek commented, "This Special Issue is important as it provides scientists and decision-makers with valuable data and peer-reviewed engineering tools and procedures for analysis and characterization of extreme meteorological and oceanographic events such as Hurricane Katrina. The thirteen papers provide useful lessons learned from independent and critical assessments conducted by experts. The special issue will serve as a comprehensive guide for planners at all levels of government, engineers and scientists developing predictive modeling capabilities and emergency plans for hurricanes."The Special Issue of | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
January 26, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100126111949.htm | Haiti reconstruction will require local input | Destruction in Haiti, the result of a January 12 earthquake, is staggering. The majority of the capital city of Port-au-Prince will have to be rebuilt from scratch. Isabelle Thomas-Maret, a Université de Montréal urbanism professor who specializes in rebuilding after natural catastrophes, survived hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and was consulted in rebuilding that city. | Haiti must avoid many pitfalls in its reconstruction, warns Thomas-Maret: "Elected officials and urban planners from Haiti will have to gauge the needs of the local population in their reconstruction plan. The mistake would be to parachute a team of international experts who would impose their vision without consulting the local expertise."In New Orleans, a reconstruction plan was recently adopted by citizens and elected officials, close to five years after the disaster. It was a long participative process because an initial plan by an outside committee of experts was very poorly received -- precisely what Haiti must avoid. "After providing citizens with temporary lodging and rebuilding the basic water, electricity and sewer infrastructures, decisions regarding the reconstruction mustn't be rushed, because mistakes will be difficult to correct," says Thomas-Maret.Thomas-Maret says Port-au-Prince was ill prepared to face its earthquake. If the capital had possessed an emergency plan the impact of the earthquake could have been much less dramatic. "That said, urban planning in New Orleans didn't take into consideration the vulnerabilities of its territory," she says. "Three weeks prior to the hurricane, I remember speaking with a hydrologist about the technical possibility of the dikes rupturing. His modeling clearly predicted what happened." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
January 13, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100112121948.htm | People's racial biases can skew perceptions of how much help victims need | When assessing the amount of help someone needs, people's perceptions can be skewed by their racial biases, according to a Kansas State University study. | Donald Saucier, K-State associate professor of psychology, and psychology graduate students Sara Smith, Topeka, and Jessica McManus, Maineville, Ohio, surveyed undergraduate students a year after Hurricane Katrina to examine their perceptions of the hurricane victims and the helping response.The researchers created a questionnaire that evaluated the participants' perceptions of Hurricane Katrina victims. The questionnaire evaluated whom the participants perceived to be the victims based on measures like gender, race and socioeconomic status. The results showed that participants generally thought people impacted by Hurricane Katrina were black and lower class."What we wanted to do was see how perceptions of victims of Hurricane Katrina would interact with things like racism," Saucier said. "We wanted to look at how much the participants felt that the victims may have been to blame for their own situation in Katrina."The researchers measured differences in the participants, including their levels of conservatism, empathy and racism. The findings showed that when recalling victims of Hurricane Katrina, participants who were less racist thought the victims did not receive adequate help from the government. Participants who were more racist thought the victims received adequate government assistance and were at fault for their situation. The survey also asked questions that measured whether the participants thought the victims had enough time to evacuate and whether they had enough resources to get out before the hurricane hit."We asked the participants to make personality attributions about individuals, such as whether they thought the victims were lazy, stupid, sinful or unlucky," Saucier said. "If they said they were lazy, stupid or sinful, they were putting more blame on the victims for the situation. If they said they were unlucky, they took away the blame."The results suggest that perceptions of the victims and the Hurricane Katrina situation depended on the participants' individual differences, including their levels of racism. Negative perceptions and placing blame on the victims were generally associated with the participants' perceptions that the situation was less of an emergency and that the victims needed less help.Saucier said although the findings can't fix what happened to the victims, the study helps show how people interpret the situation. He said when something negative happens, people often evaluate the situation and see whether they can fix it, and sometimes they avoid the situation by blaming the victim.The researchers study the effects of group membership, and groups can be categorized in various ways, including by gender, race and socioeconomic status. Studies show there are specific factors that cause someone to help a member of their own group more than others. In helping situations, discrimination is often expressed by not giving help to those of a different group than the helper, Saucier said."Rather than doing something bad, the person who chooses not to help the out-group member fails to do something good," Saucier said. "I think this illustrates the complexity of how prejudice is expressed in contemporary society despite the social norms that usually serve to suppress the expression of prejudice."Saucier said discrimination is often expressed only when other factors are present that would justify the action and rationalize it as something other than an expression of prejudice. Factors that contribute to the justification of not helping someone include the time it would take to help; the risk, effort, difficulty and financial cost involved; the distance between the potential helper and the person needing help; the level of emergency and the ambiguity of the helping situation.The researchers said the Hurricane Katrina situation had several elements that studies show trigger acts of discrimination, such as a high cost of help, a high level of emergency and a large amount of time and effort required to help. The researchers are exploring other helping situations and how other group memberships affect the helping response."We want to examine how the perception of someone that you're going to be helping is going to affect your perception of how much help they need and how much help you'll want to give," Saucier said.Though it's unlikely that researchers can fix the beliefs and attitudes that lead to discrimination, studies are being done to try to change the behavior that is expressed when related to discrimination, Saucier said.The researchers' findings on Hurricane Katrina victims are included in a chapter about discrimination against out-group members in helping situations in "The Psychology of Prosocial Behavior: Group processes, intergroup relations and helping," published in September 2009. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
January 7, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100106193318.htm | Scientists probe mystery of loop current in eastern Gulf of Mexico | A study released by the Minerals Management Service January 6 examines the circulation in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and sheds new light on the behavior of the Loop Current (LC) and Loop Current Eddies (LCEs), the relation between the upper- and lower-layer currents, and the variability of water mass characteristics in deepwater. | When the LC and the LCE are present in the Gulf near oil and gas activities, operators may have to curtail or amend their operations due to the strength of the current or eddy."The observations from this study will help MMS and other scientists better understand the Loop Current and improve our forecasting of its behavior in the Gulf of Mexico," said Dr. Alexis Lugo-Fernandez, the MMS physical oceanographer responsible for the study. "This is important because oil and gas activities in the deepwater Gulf are affected by the presence of the Loop Current and the Loop Current Eddies."Prepared under a cooperative agreement by Louisiana State University's Coastal Marine Institute, Observation of the Deepwater Manifestation of the Loop Current and Loop Current Rings in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico chronicled the deployment in the Eastern Gulf of a deepwater mooring cable measuring more than 11,800 feet for two years. The study supplements information gathered from a previous three year deployment.The mooring data suggest the LC and LCEs that dominate upper-layer circulation in the Eastern GOM also influence the deeper currents in the Eastern GOM.Dr. Lugo-Fernandez noted that a method to transmit significant energy in the form of heat to deep water in the GOM during the 2005 hurricane season was observed during this study. As sea levels rise near the center of tropical storms, the resulting higher pressure causes a small but measurable increase in temperature at all water depths. He explained that "Simply due to the large number of storm occurrences within the GOM, these findings represent an important process for transmitting energy to the deepwater."Copies of this study, Observation of the Deepwater Manifestation of the Loop Current and Loop Current Rings in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, (OCS Study MMS 2009-050), may be downloaded from the MMS website. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
January 6, 2010 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100105100031.htm | Serious emotional disturbances found among children after Katrina | A team made up of mental health professionals, emergency response experts, and researchers from several universities, including Virginia Tech, has published the results of a study that shows serious emotional disturbances among children who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Category 3 storm ravaged the Gulf Coast in August 2005. | The study, published in a recent issue of the Characteristics of SED include inappropriate behavior, depression, hyperactivity, eating disorders, fears and phobias, and learning difficulties."Stress exposure was associated strongly with serious emotional disturbances," said Russell Jones, professor of psychology in the College of Science at Virginia Tech and member of the research team. "More than 20 percent of the youths with high stress exposure had hurricane-related SED."The study found that youth who experienced death of loved one during the storm had the strongest association with SED. Exposure to physical adversity was the next strongest."The prevalence of SED among youths exposed to Hurricane Katrina remains high 18 to 27 months after the storm," Jones said. "This suggests a substantial need for mental health treatment resources in the hurricane-affected areas."Katrina was the costliest hurricane in United States history as well as one of the five deadliest. Four years after the storm, nearly thousands of residents of Mississippi and Louisiana are still displaced from their homes. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,010 |
December 2, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091130111531.htm | NASA assessing new roles for ailing QuikScat satellite | NASA mission managers are assessing options for future operations of the venerable QuikScat satellite following the age-related failure of a mechanism that spins the scatterometer antenna. This spinning antenna had been providing near-real-time ocean- surface wind speed and direction data over 90 percent of the global ocean every day. | In recent months, the QuikScat project team has been monitoring a pattern of increasing friction in the bearings that allow the antenna to spin, leading to increased resistance and strain on the motor that turns QuikScat's rotating antenna. This degradation was fully expected, as the spin mechanism was designed to last about 5 years.After experiencing further difficulties over the weekend, the antenna stopped spinning early today, Nov. 23. The QuikScat spacecraft and scatterometer instrument themselves remain in otherwise good health. Should engineers be unable to restart the antenna, QuikScat will be unable to continue its primary science mission, as the antenna spin is necessary to estimate wind speed and direction and form the wide data swath necessary to obtain nearly global sampling.Over the coming days, NASA managers will review contingency plans for restarting the antenna and assess options for using the mission in its present degraded state to advance Earth system science in the event the antenna cannot be restarted. For example, degraded scatterometer measurements from QuikScat can still be useful for cross-calibrating the mission's climate data record with measurements from other scatterometers, including the operational EUMETSAT ASCAT instrument, India's recently launched Oceansat-2 and a planned Chinese scatterometer. Specific operational forecasting applications such as polar ice measurements and limited hurricane observations may also be supportable.By any measure of success, the 10-year-old QuikScat mission is a unique national resource that has achieved and far surpassed its science objectives. Designed for a two-year lifetime, QuikScat has been used around the globe by the world's operational meteorological agencies to improve weather forecasts and identify the location, size and strength of hurricanes and other storms in the open ocean. The mission has also provided critical information for monitoring, modeling, forecasting and researching our atmosphere, ocean and climate.The tremendous success of QuikScat led the National Research Council, in its 2007 decadal survey report for Earth science, to recommend that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration develop an operational version of QuikScat, called the Extended Ocean Vector Winds Mission (XOVWM).More information on QuikScat is online at: | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
October 26, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090813142508.htm | Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary Among Healthiest Coral Reefs In Gulf Of Mexico | Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary is among the healthiest coral reef ecosystems in the tropical Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, according to a new NOAA report. | The report, "A Biogeographic Characterization of Fish Communities and Associated Benthic Habitats within the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary," offers insights into the coral and fish communities within the sanctuary based on data collected in 2006 and 2007. Sanctuary managers will use the report to track and monitor changes in the marine ecosystem located 70 to 115 miles off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana."We found that 50 percent of the area surveyed for this report is covered by live coral," said Chris Caldow, a NOAA marine biologist and lead author on the report. "This is significant because such high coral cover is a real rarity and provides critical habitat for many different types of fish and other animals that live in these underwater systems."The sanctuary is also unusual in that it is dominated by top-level predators, including large grouper, jacks, and snappers that are virtually absent throughout the U.S. Caribbean. Researchers looked at the relationship between physical measures of the sanctuary's habitat such as depth, slope and geographic location, and the nature of the fish community in each location."Ultimately our goal was to develop a protocol that would detect and track long-term changes in fish and sea-floor community structure," Caldow said. "Once managers are equipped with this information, they can better understand how threats from climate change and other stressors will impact the ecosystem."The report cautions that despite the sanctuary's relatively healthy condition, it may be more susceptible to environmental impacts than previously thought. For example, scientists observed high levels of coral bleaching and corals severely impacted from hurricane activity.NOAA prepared the report based on data collected in 2006 and 2007, with input from scientists and managers at Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.Flower Gardens Report: Flower Garden Banks Sanctuary: Center for Coastal Management & Assessment: CCMA Biogeography Branch: | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
October 21, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091020122536.htm | Researchers Can Predict Hurricane-related Power Outages | Using data from Hurricane Katrina and four other destructive storms, researchers from Johns Hopkins and Texas A&M universities say they have found a way to accurately predict power outages in advance of a hurricane. Their approach provides estimates of how many outages will occur across a region as a hurricane is approaching. | The information provided by their computer models has the potential to save utilities substantial amounts of money, savings that can then be passed on to customers, the researchers say. In addition, appropriate crew levels and placements can help facilitate rapid restoration of power after the storm.The study was a collaborative effort involving Seth Guikema, an assistant professor of geography and environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins and formerly of Texas A&M; Steven Quiring, an assistant professor of geography at Texas A&M; and Seung-Ryong Han, who was Guikema's doctoral student at Texas A&M and is now based at Korea University. Their work, which was funded by a Gulf Coast utility company that wishes to remain anonymous, is published in the current issue of the journal The research focused on two common challenges. When a hurricane is approaching, an electric power provider must decide how many repair crews to request from other utilities, a decision that may cost the provider millions of dollars. The utility also must decide where to locate these crews within its service areas to enable fast and efficient restoration of service after the hurricane ends. Having accurate estimates, prior to the storm's arrival, of how many outages will exist and where they will occur will allow utilities to better plan their crew requests and crew locations, the researchers say.What makes the research team's computational approach unique and increases its accuracy, Guikema and Quiring say, is the combination of more detailed information about the storm, the area it is impacting and the power system of the area, together with more appropriate statistical models."If the power company overestimates, it has spent a lot of unnecessary money," Quiring said. "If it underestimates, the time needed to restore power can take several extra days or longer, which is unacceptable to them and the people they serve. So these companies need the best estimates possible, and we think this study can help them make the best possible informed decision."In addition, more accurate models "provide a much better basis for preparing for restoring power after the storm," Guikema said, adding that "the goal is to restore power faster and save customers money."In developing their computer model, the researchers looked at damage data from five hurricanes: Dennis (1995), Danny (1997), Georges (1998), Ivan (2004) and Katrina (2005). In the areas studied, Ivan created 13,500 power outages; Katrina, more than 10,000; Dennis, about 4,800; Georges, 1,075; and Danny, 620.For the worst of these storms, some customers were without power for up to 11 days. The research team collected information about the locations of outages in these past hurricanes, with an outage defined as permanent loss of power to a set of customers due to activation of a protective device in the power system.The researchers also included information about the power system in each area (poles, transformers, etc.), hurricane wind speeds, wetness of the soil, long-term average precipitation, the land use, local topography and other related factors. This data was then used to train and validate a statistical regression model called a Generalized Additive Model, a particular form of model that can account for nonlinear relationships between the variables. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
October 20, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091020122538.htm | Seismic Noise Unearths Lost Hurricanes | Seismologists have found a new way to piece together the history of hurricanes in the North Atlantic -- by looking back through records of the planet's seismic noise. It's an entirely new way to tap into the rich trove of seismic records, and the strategy might help establish a link between global warming and the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. | "Looking for something like hurricane records in seismology doesn't occur to anybody," said Carl Ebeling, of Northwestern University in Evanston, who is presenting his research at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon. "It's a strange and wondrous combination."The research is attempting to address a long-standing debate about whether the warming of sea-surface waters as a result of climate change is producing more frequent or more powerful hurricanes in the North Atlantic. It's a tough question to answer.Before satellite observations began in the 1960s, weather monitoring was spotty. Ships, planes, and land-based monitoring stations probably missed some hurricanes, which tend to last for about a week or so, Ebeling said. This type of uncertainty poses a problem for scientists, who can't identify trends until they know what the actual numbers were.To fill in the historical blanks, Ebeling and colleague Seth Stein are looking to seismic noise, an ever-present background signal that bathes the surface of the Earth. Seismic noise derives its energy from the atmosphere and then gets transmitted through the oceans into the solid earth, where it travels as waves. Seismometers record the noise as very low-amplitude wiggle patterns with much larger, obvious signals that come from earthquakes. Subtle changes in seismic noise frequency and amplitude have long been ignored.Ebeling and Stein analyzed digital seismograms dating back to the early 90s from two monitoring stations: one in Harvard, Mass., and one in San Juan, Puerto Rico. For this study, the researchers looked at seismograms recorded during known hurricanes in an attempt to see whether patterns produced during hurricanes look predictably different from patterns produced during regular storms or when there are no storms at all.Their preliminary results suggest that hurricanes do indeed produce recognizable patterns, and the waves generated by hurricanes travel large distances. The Harvard station recorded signals from Hurricane Andrew more than a thousand kilometers away."There's definitely something there that shows this can be workable," Ebeling said. "This is something new and interesting."At least one major hurdle remains before scientists will be able to pull together a complete hurricane history out of the seismic records. For most of the 20th century, seismograms recorded data on rolls of paper. Those records, which contain hundreds of thousands of hours of data, will need to be digitized. Ebeling is looking for an efficient way to do that. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
October 3, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091001164058.htm | Coral Bleaching Increases Chances Of Coral Disease | Mass coral bleaching has devastated coral colonies around the world for almost three decades. Now scientists have found that bleaching can make corals more susceptible to disease and, in turn, coral disease can exacerbate the negative effects of bleaching. A paper in the October issue of the journal | "Traditionally, scientists have attributed coral declines after mass bleaching events to the bleaching only," says Marilyn Brandt, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Miami and the lead author on the paper. "This study shows that the interplay between diseases and bleaching can play a much larger role than we realized."Corals rely on algae that live inside each coral polyp to provide nutrients and supplemental oxygen. Bleaching occurs when these colorful algae die out or leave the polyps, often in response to overly warm conditions. Without their brightly colored algae, the coral's skeleton becomes visible through its transparent tissue, making it appear white. Although the tissue remains intact and can recover over time, this stressful condition can cause corals to stop growing and reproducing.Warmer water temperatures can also lead to increased incidence of coral diseases, which, unlike most bleaching, can cause irreparable loss of coral tissues. In many cases, bleaching and disease occur concurrently on coral reefs. Brandt and her colleagues wondered if the occurrences of bleaching and disease were linked beyond simply occurring under the same conditions."Coral bleaching and coral diseases are both related to prolonged thermal stress," says Brandt. "But we wanted to look closer to find out whether they were interacting and what was actually causing the decline we see."In the summer and fall of 2005, the same oceanic temperature shifts that contributed to the creation of Hurricane Katrina caused a warm mass of water to settle over the northeast Caribbean and parts of Florida. This sustained warming triggered a mass coral bleaching event that affected up to 90 percent of coral reef cover in the area. Brandt and her colleagues surveyed colonies in the Florida Keys before, during and after this event to determine the relationship between bleaching and coral disease.The researchers found that the coral diseases they observed were related to bleaching, but in different ways. The prevalence of white plague disease increased during the bleaching event, an observation that Brandt says may have to do with increased susceptibility to the disease."Higher temperatures can increase the growth rate of coral pathogens, such as bacteria and other microbes, so we probably see a higher disease incidence because of the expansion of these pathogens in the environment," Brandt says. "But bleaching is also a stressed state, and just like any other animal under stress, the coral's disease resistance is lowered."In addition, the researchers found that colonies already infected with another disease, known as dark spot disease, suffered more extensive bleaching than healthy corals. Brandt thinks a fungus that's likely associated with this infection could cause the relationship of the algae and the coral to be weakened, leaving the corals more susceptible to bleaching.Because diseases happen on a much finer scale than mass bleaching events, Brandt says that more informed management of coral ecosystems should involve more frequent monitoring to determine the underlying causes of coral damage."Understanding how these different stressors interact can help explain the mortality pattern we see after large-scale bleaching events," says Brandt. "If we understand what's causing the mortality, we can institute control measures that are more specific to the causes." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
September 30, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090928172359.htm | Storm Killers: Earth Scan Lab Tracks Cold Water Upwellings In Gulf | Complex interactions between the ocean and overlying atmosphere cause hurricanes to form, and also have a tremendous amount of influence on the path, intensity and duration of a hurricane or tropical weather event. As researchers develop new ways to better understand and predict the nature of individual storms, a largely unstudied phenomenon has caught the attention of scientists at LSU’s Earth Scan Laboratory, or ESL. Cool water upwellings occurring within ocean cyclones following alongside and behind hurricanes are sometimes strong enough to reduce the strength of hurricanes as they cross paths. | “Ocean cyclones are areas of upwelling, meaning that cold water is not far from the surface as compared to the water surrounding it,” said Nan Walker, ESL director. “The Gulf of Mexico is full of ocean cyclones, or cold water eddies, many of which move rapidly around the margin of Gulf’s Loop Current, which is the main source of water for the Gulf Stream.”While the upwelling is important to Gulf fisheries because it delivers nutrients into the surface waters, causing algal blooms and attracting marine life to the areas, oceanographers have recently begun to realize that these cyclones intensify currents near the surface and along the bottom of the ocean in areas of gas and oil exploration.“Now,” Walker added, “our research has shown that ocean cyclones also provide temperatures cold enough to reduce the intensity of large Gulf of Mexico hurricanes.”Walker’s research team has been looking into the upwelling phenomena since 2004, when they were able to use satellite data received at the ESL to view ocean temperatures soon after Hurricane Ivan’s Gulf crossing.“Clear skies gave us a rare opportunity to really analyze the oceanic conditions surrounding the wake of Ivan,” said Walker. “We saw abnormally low temperatures in two large areas along the storm’s track, where minimum temperatures were well below those required to support a hurricane, about 80 degrees Fahrenheit.” This suggested to Walker that areas of extreme cooling could be providing immediate negative feedback to Gulf hurricanes, decreasing their intensity.“In Ivan’s case, we found that its wind field increased the counter-clockwise spinning of the ocean cyclones in its path, catapulting cold water to the surface, which in turn reduced the oceanic ‘fuel’ needed for the hurricane to maintain its strength,” said Walker. She observed that Ivan’s intensity decreased as it moved toward the Mississippi/Alabama coast, despite the presence of a large warm eddy, a feature generally known for its potential to increase hurricane strength. Thus, the impact of the cold eddies overwhelmed that of the warm eddy.“Cool wakes are most beneficial when the storm occurs later in the season because the Gulf doesn’t warm as rapidly in fall and may not have time to warm back up,” said Walker.The research being conducted at ESL could eventually lead to novel new weather study techniques.“Our research, in collaboration with Robert Leben at the University of Colorado, is providing an advanced monitoring system so that likely ocean impacts can be assessed in advance of the Gulf crossing,” said Walker. “However, it is important to remember that we don’t predict; we provide valuable information that serves as tools for those in the business of predicting, such as the National Hurricane Center.”Of course, this is only one facet of the work done at LSU’s ESL. The lab has played a major role in mapping hurricane-related flooding, tracking oil spills and determining causes for the size and location of dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, along with many other tasks employing satellite imagery.ESL was founded more than 20 years ago, and employs undergraduate students, many of whom stay on with the lab throughout their entire college career. The lab’s Web site, | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
September 24, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090923143337.htm | Global Warming May Dent El Niño's Protective Shield From Atlantic Hurricanes, Increase Droughts | El Niño, the periodic eastern Pacific phenomenon credited with shielding the United States and Caribbean from severe hurricane seasons, may be overshadowed by its brother in the central Pacific due to global warming, according to an article in the September 24 issue of the journal | "There are two El Niños, or flavors of El Niño," said Ben Kirtman, co-author of the study and professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami's Rosentstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "In addition to the eastern Pacific El Niño which we know and love, a second El Niño in the central Pacific is on the increase."El Niño is a recurring warm water current along the equator in the Pacific Ocean that affects weather circulation patterns in the tropics. The eastern El Niño increases wind sheer in the Atlantic that may hamper the development of major hurricanes there. The central Pacific El Niño, near the International Dateline, has been blamed for worsening drought conditions in Australia and India as well as minimizing the effects of its beneficial brother to the east.Led by Sang-Wook Yeh of the Korea Ocean Research & Development Institute, a team of scientists applied Pacific Ocean sea surface temperature data from the past 150 years to 11 global warming models developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Eight of the models showed that global warming conditions will increase the incidence of the central Pacific El Niño. Over the past 20 years, according to the data, the frequency of an El Niño event in the central Pacific has increased from one out of every five to half of all El Niño occurrences."The results described in this paper indicate that the global impacts of El Niño may significantly change as the climate warms," said Yeh.Though the centers of the central and eastern areas are roughly 4,100 miles apart, El Niños historically have not simultaneously occurred in both places. An increase in central Pacific El Niño events may reduce the hurricane-shielding effects of the eastern Pacific event."Currently, we are in the middle of a developing eastern Pacific El Niño event," said Kirtman, "which is part of why we're experiencing such a mild hurricane season in the Atlantic. We also anticipate the southern United States to have a fairly wet winter, and the northeast may be dry and warm."Kirtman expects the current El Niño event to end next spring, perhaps followed by a La Niña, which he expects may bode for a more intense Atlantic hurricane season in 2010.Growing up in southern California, Kirtman frequently had to man the sump pump in his family's basement during the rainy season, which he learned later was caused by El Niño."We're finally learning about how ocean current flows and increases in sea surface temperature influence weather patterns, which affect every one of us, including the kid manning the sump pump," he said. "I have devoted much of my career to studying El Niño because of how it affects people and their lives."Kirtman works with various meteorological organizations around the world to help developing countries respond to climate extremes."We provide them with the forecasts," he said, "and the countries use the results to develop their response." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
September 10, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090908103625.htm | Tornado Threat Increases As Gulf Hurricanes Get Larger | Tornadoes that occur from hurricanes moving inland from the Gulf Coast are increasing in frequency, according to researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This increase seems to reflect the increase in size and frequency among large hurricanes that make landfall from the Gulf of Mexico. | The findings can be found in “As the size of landfalling hurricanes from the Gulf of Mexico increases, we’re seeing more tornadoes than we did in the past that can occur up to two days and several hundred miles inland from the landfall location,” said James Belanger, doctoral student in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech and lead author of the paper.Currently, it’s well known that when hurricanes hit land, there’s a risk that tornadoes may form in the area. Until now, no one has quantified that risk because observations of tornadoes were too sporadic prior to the installation of the NEXRAD Doppler Radar Network in 1995. Belanger along with co-authors Judith Curry, professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Tech and research scientist Carlos Hoyos, decided to see if they could create a model using the more reliable tornado record that’s existed since 1995.The model that they developed for hurricane-induced tornadoes uses four factors that serve as good predictors of tornado activity: size, intensity, track direction and whether there’s a strong gradient of moisture at midlevels in the storm's environment.“The size of a tropical cyclone basically sets the domain over which tornadoes can form. So a larger storm that has more exposure over land has a higher propensity for producing tornadoes than a smaller one, on average,” said Belanger.The team looked at 127 tropical cyclones from 1948 up to the 2008 hurricane season and went further back to 1920 modifying their model to account for the type of data collected at that time. They found that since 1995 there has been a 35 percent percent increase in the size of tropical cyclones from the Gulf compared to the previous active period of storms from 1948-1964, which has lead to a doubling in the number of tornadoes produced per storm. The number of hurricane-induced tornadoes during the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons is unprecedented in the historical record since 1920, according to the model.“The beauty of the model is that not only can we use it to reconstruct the observational record, but we can also use it as a forecasting tool,” said Belanger.To test how well it predicted the number of tornadoes associated with a given hurricane, they input the intensity of the storm at landfall, it’s size, track and moisture at mid-levels, and were able to generate a forecast of how many tornadoes formed from the hurricane. They found that for Hurricane Ike in 2008, their model predicted exactly the number of tornadoes that occurred, 33. For Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the model predicted 56 tornadoes, and 58 were observed.The team’s next steps are to take a look to see how hurricane size, not just intensity (as indicated by the Safir-Simpson scale), affects the damage experienced by residents.“Storm surge, rain and flooding are all connected to the size of the storm,” said Curry. “Yet, size is an underappreciated factor associated with damage from hurricanes. So its important to develop a better understanding of what controls hurricane size and how size influences hurricane damage. The great damage in Galveston from Hurricane Ike in 2008 was inconsistent with Category 2 wind speeds at landfall, but it was the large size that caused the big storm surge that did most of the damage.” | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
August 27, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090826152721.htm | Tropical Storms Endure Over Wet Land, Fizzle Over Dry | If it has already rained, it's going to continue to pour, according to a Purdue University study of how ocean-origin storms behave when they come ashore. | More than 30 years of monsoon data from India showed that ground moisture where the storms make landfall is a major indicator of what the storm will do from there. If the ground is wet, the storm is likely to sustain, while dry conditions should calm the storm."Once a storm comes overland, it was unclear whether it would stall, accelerate or fizzle out," said Dev Niyogi, Indiana state climatologist and associate professor of agronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences. "We found that whether a storm becomes more intense or causes heavy rains could depend on the land conditions - something we'd not considered. Thus far we've looked at these storms based mainly on ocean conditions or upper atmosphere."Niyogi said tropical storms gain their strength from warm ocean water evaporation."The same phenomenon - the evaporation from the ocean that sustains the storms - could be the same phenomenon that sustains that storm over land with moisture in the soil," he said. "The storm will have more moisture and energy available over wet soil than dry."Niyogi's team's findings were published in the August edition of the journal Storm data fed into a model showed that higher levels of ground moisture would sustain Indian monsoon depressions. The model's prediction was proven when compared to ground conditions for 125 Indian monsoons over 33 years, where storms sustained when the ground was wet at landfall.Knowing the sustainability of a storm could lead to better predictions on flooding and damage inland before a monsoon or a hurricane makes landfall."We think the physics is such that we could see similar results more broadly, such as in the United States," Niyogi said.The National Science Foundation and NASA funded the research. The Purdue led-team also consisted of researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA-GSFC/ESSIC, the University of Georgia, the Indian Space Research Organization and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.Niyogi said the next step is to use the model and ground moisture data to test these theories for hurricanes in the United States. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
August 26, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090824083606.htm | NASA's 'A-Train' Of Satellites On Track With Hurricane Research | NASA has several satellites that orbit the Earth one behind the other on the same track. They're called the "A-Train" and one of the things they study is tropical cyclones. There are also other satellites outside the A-Train that are used to study different aspects of tropical cyclones. The satellites that form the A-Train provide unique information about tropical cyclones, the collective term for tropical depressions, tropical storms, hurricanes and typhoons. | "Hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones are both a curse and a blessing for highly populated tropical and subtropical nations, bringing both terrible destruction and life-sustaining rainfall each year," said Bill Patzert, climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Many scientists have hypothesized that in the future our warming climate will change hurricane-induced rainfall patterns, perhaps increasing the destructive power of these storms. NASA, NOAA and university scientists are mining the wealth of scientific information from A-Train instruments to improve our understanding of current and future hurricanes. These data will help officials plan for better coastal protection and the most effective public policy."The A-Train satellite formation currently consists of five satellites flying in close proximity: Aqua, CloudSat, CALIPSO, PARASOL and Aura.Each satellite in the A-Train crosses the equator within a few minutes of each another at around 1:30 p.m. local time. By combining the different sets of nearly simultaneous observations, scientists are able to gain a better understanding of important parameters related to climate change. The two primary satellites in the A-Train that contribute to hurricane research are Aqua and CloudSat. The other satellites provide important information about clouds and aerosols that assist with hurricane research.So why put all of these different satellites in a "train"? By combining the satellites and their data, scientists are able to gain a better understanding of important parameters related to the behavior of hurricanes, in addition to climate change information. The A-Train formation allows for simultaneous coordinated measurements. Data from several different satellites can be used together to obtain comprehensive information about atmospheric components or processes that are happening at the same time. Combining the information collected simultaneously from several sources gives a more complete answer to many questions than would be possible from any one satellite taken alone at different times.Aqua is designed to acquire precise atmospheric and oceanic measurements to provide a greater understanding of their role in Earth's climate and its variations. There are three instruments that fly on Aqua that are used in tropical cyclone research.Aqua’s Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument views the entire surface of Earth every one to two days, providing visible imagery from ice caps to hurricanes.The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E) on Aqua was provided by Japan’s Aerospace agency (JAXA). Over the ocean, AMSR-E microwave frequencies probe through smaller cloud particles to measure the microwave emissions from larger raindrops. AMSR-E provides improved measurements of rainfall rates, which is very useful to know as tropical storms approach land or are traveling over land.Aqua’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) suite provides visible, infrared and microwave images of tropical storms. AIRS also measures cloud top temperature and pressure and the vertical profile of water vapor. Cloud top temperatures help forecasters recognize deep convective cells. Clouds at different heights are shown in different colors in the infrared satellite images, so that the highest clouds appear purple, and the second highest clouds appear in blue. How does infrared imagery detect how high clouds are in the sky? The coldest ones are higher in the sky (because in the troposphere, the lowest layer of atmosphere where weather happens, temperatures fall the higher up you go until you get to the stratosphere).In NASA’s infrared imagery, purple clouds are as cold as or colder than 220 Kelvin or minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (F). The blue colored clouds are about 240 Kelvin, or minus 27F. The colder the clouds are, the higher they are, and the more powerful the thunderstorms are that make up the cyclone.Because the infrared imagery provides temperature it also indicates how warm the ocean waters are that surround a storm. Warmer temperatures are also false-colored so that an orange color represents temperatures of 80F (300 Kelvin).CloudsatCloudSat uses advanced radar to "slice" through clouds to see a unique view of what a tropical cyclone looks like from the side. CloudSat sees structure, composition, and effects of clouds. CloudSat imagery is also false-colored to indicate intensity of the reflected radar energy. CloudSat data also show how high thunderstorms are in tropical cyclones, which is important in intensity forecasting. Higher thunderstorms or "hot towers" indicate a stronger storm. In CloudSat images there are certain things to look for: Blue areas along the top of the clouds indicate cloud ice, while wavy blue lines on the bottom center of the image indicate intense rainfall.CALIPSOCALIPSO provides new insight into the role that clouds and atmospheric aerosols (airborne particles) play in regulating Earth's weather, climate, and air quality. CALIPSO and Aqua take coincident observations of the change in radiation (energy and heat) in a layer of the atmosphere. CALIPSO and CloudSat are highly complementary and together provide new, never-before-seen 3-D perspectives of how clouds and aerosols form, evolve, and affect weather and climate.PARASOLThe French satellite PARASOL (Polarization and Anisotropy of Réflectances for Atmospheric Sciences coupled with Observations from a Lidar) works with CALIPSO to improve the characterization of cloud and aerosol microphysical and radiative properties, needed to understand and model the radiative impact of clouds and aerosols. Like CALIPSO, its data are not used directly in hurricane research. PARASOL provides polarized light measurements that allow better characterization of clouds and aerosols in Earth's atmosphere, in particular, distinguishing natural and human-produced aerosols.AuraAura, Latin for air, is dedicated to the study of the chemistry andy dynamics of the atmosphere. Aura is designed to produce the first global assessment of tropospheric ozone and observe the protective stratospheric ozone layer. Aura measurements are needed to help solve the mystery of increasing stratospheric water vapor. Relative to tropical cyclones and thunderstorms (convective storms) Aura data are being used to try and answer fundamental climate change questions related to moistening or drying of the upper troposphere as convective activity changes.More NASA Satellites Involved in Hurricane StudiesNASA uses several other satellites in hurricane research that are not in the A-Train, including the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, Jason-1, OSTM/Jason-2, Landsat-5, Landsat-7, QuikScat, and Terra. NASA also creates images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES). NASA researches hurricanes and supplies some of the data from these satellites to NOAA, who forecast the storms.Using all of these satellites and their instruments, NASA scientists gather data on many factors that determine if a tropical cyclone may strengthen or weaken. Data include: storm and surface winds; sea surface heights and temperatures; rainfall intensity and area; lightning; cloud water; water vapor; cloud heights, extent of cloud cover and cloud temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure; cloud development; and size of the storm.The satellites that work solo include TRMM and QuikScat. TRMM and QuikScat each provide important data that is used operationally by the National Hurricane Center to assist in their forecasts. TRMM's rainfall estimates within a storm, and imaging of towering clouds known as "hot towers," give hints about a storm's strength and whether it is weakening or strengthening. QuikScat uses microwaves to peer through clouds and obtain wind speeds in tropical cyclones, a critical observation in knowing if a storm is changing strength. Terra and Landsat-7 are members of the Morning Constellation. In the Terra satellite, there is a MODIS instrument like that on Aqua, and there is the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument that provides global information on cloud heights and cloud motion winds. Landsat provides before and after images of a hurricane's impact onshore. Emergency managers in Louisiana used Landsat imagery after Hurricane Katrina to see areas affected by flooding.There are also a fleet of GOES satellites in orbit that watch weather in the eastern and western halves of the United States. Currently, GOES-11 watches the U.S. West Coast, and GOES-12 watches the East Coast. The Jason-1 and OSTM/Jason-2 are in interleaved orbits and work with each other to provide complementary data.A variety of organizations manage the satellites inside and outside of the A-Train: PARASOL is managed by the French Space Agency (CNES). CALIPSO is a joint NASA Langley Research Center/CNES project. Aqua, Aura, Terra, and TRMM are managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. CloudSat, QuikScat, and Jason-1 are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. Landsat is a joint U.S. Geological Survey/NASA managed mission. GOES is managed by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration; NASA Goddard's GOES Project Office generates GOES images and animations. The international OSTM/Jason-2 is managed by a 4-way partnership of CNES, NOAA, NASA/JPL and European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).The next time a hurricane is brewing anywhere around the world, you can be sure that NASA researchers are going to catch the A-Train. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
August 14, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090813142428.htm | GOES-11 Sees Tropical Cyclones Fizzling And Forming In Eastern Pacific | There are a lot of ups and downs in tropical cyclone formation in the Pacific Ocean this week, and that's keeping NOAA's GOES-11 satellite busy. There are remnants of Maka and Tropical Depression 9E, a fizzled Felicia, and a new Tropical Storm named Guillermo. | The graphics folks that create images from the satellite at the GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. are posting updated images on the GOES Project website often and forecasters are watching them.In the Central Pacific Ocean, Maka and Felicia are now a memory. Felicia dissipated before it reached Hawaii, and the remnants of Maka are 1,400 miles west-southwest of Kauai. Maka's remnant clouds and showers are still moving west, and it's unlikely that it will re-organize. That means a quiet Central Pacific Ocean for the next two days.In the Eastern Pacific, Tropical Depression 9E (TD9E) appears to be fizzling although it may get a second chance at life, while Tropical Depression 10E powered up into Tropical Storm Guillermo.The remnants of TD9E are weakly spinning to around 30 mph, while it continues moving west-southwest near 9 mph. The center was located about 1,750 miles west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, near 13.9 north and 134.1 west. The National Hurricane Center noted that shower and thunderstorm activity has increased this morning, and the environment seems to be a little more conducive to strengthening, so TD9E isn't written off yet. In fact, there's about a 30-50% chance it may strengthen back into a tropical depression.Meanwhile, Tropical Depression 10E gained strength took the name Guillermo and it's sustained winds whipped up to near 50 mph. Guillermo is moving west-northwest near 16 mph and will continue in that direction. Guillermo is closer to mainland Mexico, but poses no threat as its heading away from land. On Aug. 13 at 5 a.m. EDT the storm was located 805 miles west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California near 16.9 north and 120.5 west. His minimum central pressure is 999 millibars. Guillermo is moving into a favorable environment, so he's expected to continue strengthening.Even though the peak of hurricane season in the eastern and central Pacific Oceans are a month away, it seems like we're already there. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
August 13, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090812143936.htm | Harbingers Of Increased Atlantic Hurricane Activity Identified | Reconstructions of past hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean indicate that the most active hurricane period in the past was during the "Medieval Climate Anomaly" about a thousand years ago when climate conditions created a "perfect storm" of La Niña-like conditions combined with warm tropical Atlantic waters. | "La Niña conditions are favorable for hurricanes because they lead to less wind shear in the tropical Atlantic," said Michael E. Mann, professor of meteorology, Penn State. When combined with warm tropical Atlantic ocean temperatures, a requirement for hurricanes to form, conditions become ideal for high levels of activity."During an El Niño, the more familiar half of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), there is more wind shear in the Caribbean and fewer hurricanes. The low Atlantic hurricane activity so far during this current season is likely related to the mitigating effects of an emerging El Niño event."Hurricane activity since the mid-1990s is the highest in the historical record, but that only goes back a little more than a century and is most accurate since the advent of air travel and satellites in recent decades," said Mann. "It is therefore difficult to assess if the recent increase in hurricane activity is in fact unusual."Mann, working with Jonathan D. Woodruff, assistant professor of geosciences, University of Massachusetts; Jeffrey P. Donnelly, associate scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Zhihua Zhang, postdoctoral assistant, Penn State, reconstructed the past 1,500 years of hurricanes using two independent methods. They report their results in the Aug. 13 issue of One estimate of hurricane numbers is based on sediment deposited during landfall hurricanes. The researchers looked for coastal areas where water breached the normal boundaries of the beaches and overwashed into protected basins. Samples from Puerto Rico, the U.S. Gulf coast, the Southern U.S. coast, the mid-Atlantic coast and the southeastern New England coast were radiocarbon dated and combined to form a history of landfall hurricanes.The other method used a previously developed statistical model for predicting hurricane activity based on climate variables. They applied the model to paleoclimate reconstructions of tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature, the history of ENSO and another climate pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which is related to the year-to-year fluctuations of the jet stream. Warm waters are necessary for hurricane development, ENSO influences the wind shear and the NAO controls the path of storms, determining whether or not they encounter favorable conditions for development.The researchers compared the results of both hurricane estimates, taking into account that the sediment measurements only record landfall hurricanes, but that the relationship between landfall hurricanes and storms that form and dissipate without ever hitting land can be estimated.Both hurricane reconstructions indicate similar overall patterns and both indicate a high period of hurricane activity during the Medieval Climate Anomaly around AD 900 to 1100."We are at levels now that are about as high as anything we have seen in the past 1,000 years," said Mann.The two estimates of hurricane numbers do not match identically. The researchers note that they do not know the exact force of a storm that will breach the beach area and deposit sediments. They are also aware that the relationship between landfalling hurricanes and those that remain at sea is not uniform through all time periods. However, they believe that key features like the medieval peak and subsequent lull are real and help to validate our current understanding of the factors governing long-term changes in Atlantic hurricane activity.One thing the estimates show is that long periods of warm Atlantic ocean conditions produce greater Atlantic hurricane activity."It seems that the paleodata support the contention that greenhouse warming may increase the frequency of Atlantic tropical storms," said Mann. "It may not be just that the storms are stronger, but that there are there may be more of them as well."The National Science Foundation and the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences supported this work. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
August 7, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090806170717.htm | NASA Eyes Category 4 Hurricane Felicia And A Stubborn Enrique | Felicia is the storm that rules the Eastern Pacific Ocean this week, but Enrique refuses to give up. Felicia is a major hurricane with sustained winds near 140 mph, and Enrique is still hanging onto tropical storm status with 50 mph sustained winds. Both cyclones are close to each other and two NASA satellites captured them together. | On August 6 at 5 a.m. EDT, powerful Felicia is still a category four hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale. She's far out to sea, about 1,480 miles west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California near 15.5 north and 131.2 west. She's moving west-northwest near 10 mph, and is expected to speed up and start to weaken in the next couple of days because of colder waters in her path. Felicia's minimum central pressure is 937 millibars.Boys can be stubborn, and Enrique is proving that, even though he's a tropical storm with a boy's name. Despite Enrique's close proximity to Felicia, he's maintaining sustained winds near 50 mph. At 5 a.m. EDT, Enrique's center was 345 miles behind Felicia's, near 20.7 north and 125.9 west. He's speeding northwest near 17 mph into cooler waters which is going to weaken him over the next day or two. Enrique's minimum central pressure is 1,000 millibars, much higher than Felicia's indicating a much weaker storm. The higher the atmospheric pressure the weaker the tropical cyclone.NASA's Terra satellite flew over Felicia and Enrique and using the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured them side-by-side on August 5 at 3 p.m. EDT. The satellite image clearly showed an eye in powerful Hurricane Felicia, while Tropical Storm Enrique's eye was not clear.Terra wasn't the only satellite to capture Felicia and Enrique battling it out for territory in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. NASA's Aqua satellite also flew overhead and its Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured the frigid cloud temperatures in both storms. Felicia's clouds are colder and higher than Enrique's clouds, because stronger hurricanes have higher (and more powerful) thunderstorms.Using AIRS and other infrared imagery to determine cloud temperature, the National Hurricane Center noted in their discussion on August 6, that Felicia's "eye has been warming and has become more well-defined over the past few hours but at the same time the cold cloud tops around the eye have also been warming." That's an indication that Felicia will start waning in strength. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
August 4, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090623112119.htm | Coral Reefs Face Increasing Difficulties Recovering From Storm Damage | As global warming whips up more powerful and frequent hurricanes and storms, the world’s coral reefs face increased disruption to their ability to breed and recover from damage. | That’s one of the findings from a new scientific study of the fate of corals in the wake of large climate-driven bleaching and storm events.“We have found clear evidence that coral recruitment – the regrowth of young corals – drops sharply in the wake of a major bleaching event or a hurricane,” says lead author Dr Jennie Mallela of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and Australian National University.Using the island of Tobago in the Caribbean as their laboratory she and colleague Professor James Crabbe of the University of Bedfordshire, UK, backtracked to 1980 to see what had happened to the corals in the wake of nine hurricanes, tropical storms and bleaching events.“In every case there was a sharp drop in coral recruitment following the event – often by as much as two thirds to three quarters. Not only were fewer new coral colonies formed, but also far fewer of the major reef building coral species recruited successfully.”“This finding mirrors our modelling studies on the fringing reefs of Jamaica, and on the Meso-American Barrier reef off the coast of Belize”, says Prof. Crabbe.Tobago lies outside the main Caribbean hurricane belt and therefore is more typical of the circumstances of most coral reefs around the world. Nevertheless its corals are disrupted by a major storm or bleaching every three or four years – and the frequency of this may be growing.“Climate researchers are seeing increasing evidence for a direct relationship between global warming and rising hurricane intensity as well as frequency,” Jennie explains. “Global warming produces significant increases in the frequency of high sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and hurricane winds are strengthened by warm surface waters.”The high temperatures cause bleaching, while the storms inflict physical destruction on the corals as well as eroding the rocky platforms they need to grow on, or burying them in sand.“Maintaining coral reef populations in the face of large-scale degradation depends critically on recruitment – the ability of the corals to breed successfully and settle on the reef to form new colonies. Our research suggests this process is severely disrupted after one of these major events.”If the disruption is sufficiently large it may threaten the actual survival of some of the larger and more spectacular reef building and brain corals, she says. “In the aftermath of a big storm or bleaching event, some of these important species appear not to have recruited at all.“Healthy reefs usually have high numbers of coral recruits and juvenile corals, whereas degraded systems typically have far fewer young colonies.”The concern is that if major storms and bleaching become more frequent as the climate warms, the ability of individual reefs to renew themselves may break down completely, Jennie says.“While our work was carried out in the Caribbean, it has general implications for coral reefs globally, and deepens our concern as to what may happen to them as global warming advances and the world’s climate becomes more tempestuous.”The research paper is Mallela, J., Crabbe, M.J.C., Hurricanes and coral bleaching linked to changes in coral recruitment in Tobago, and is published in the latest issue of Marine Environmental Research (2009). | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
August 3, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090803122732.htm | NASA's CloudSat Captures A Sideways Look At Fading Tropical Depression Lana | A NASA satellite took a sideways look at a slice of tropical depression Lana in the Central Pacific. | As Lana passed south of the Hawaiian Islands this past weekend, its maximum sustained winds peaked around 65 knots (74 mph), making it a Category One hurricane for a brief period before it ran into adverse atmospheric conditions that weakened the storm quickly.By Monday, August 3, 2009 at 5 a.m. EDT, Lana's sustained winds were down to 30 knots and her minimum central pressure had gone up to 1010 millibars. Weakening winds and rising air pressure are signs of a weakening storm. Lana was located near 14.5 degrees north latitude and 162.0 west longitude and headed west near 13 knots (15 mph).When NASA's CloudSat satellite's Cloud Profiling Radar captured a sideways look across Lana the day before, Sunday, August 2, it was still a tropical storm with high clouds higher than 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) high. CloudSat measured the highest, coldest cloud temperatures near minus 60 degrees Celsius (minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit)! Those high clouds indicated that there were some strong thunderstorms still occurring on Sunday, August 2. At the time when CloudSat swept over Lana, its maximum sustained winds were near 45 knots (52 mph) and pressure was 1008 millibars.Less than 24 hours later, satellite data showed that Lana lacked "deep convection" – that is, rapid rising air that helps to build the powerful thunderstorms that fuel the tropical storm. Thus, Lana was re-classified as a weaker tropical depression. Forecasters believe that by August 4, Lana will start dissipating, and by August 5, she'll be a remnant low pressure area in the Central Pacific. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
July 20, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090708110424.htm | Hurricane Ike's Effects On Waterways, Fish Contamination Analyzed | A long-term environmental research project being conducted at the University of Houston may offer important information about the effects of Hurricane Ike on pollution levels and help regulators determine whether existing fish-consumption advisories remain appropriate. | With this year's storm season under way, the UH engineering team's project is entering a new phase as participants collect and analyze fresh samples from Galveston Bay and related waterways.Cullen College of Engineering professor Hanadi Rifai, who has studied pollution in Houston-area bodies of water in partnership with both state and federal authorities since 2001, is leading the team."Our work with the Galveston Bay system started in the early '90s with funding from the EPA Galveston Bay National Estuary Program," said Rifai, whose team helped write the first "State of the Bay" report identifying the environmental challenges facing the estuary."We have since focused on POPs, or persistent organic pollutants, which include dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. We have a unique opportunity this year to study the effect of Hurricane Ike on these pollutants, particularly in the water and sediment of the estuary, so we are gathering a one-of-its-kind data set for the 'after' condition that we can compare to our pre-Ike 2008 data set," Rifai said. "The results will be enlightening from an environmental impact perspective of hurricanes on natural resources such as Galveston Bay."As part of the Environmental Protection Agency's Total Maximum Daily Load Program, the team has been creating sophisticated models to help determine how much pollution a body of water is taking in and where that pollution is coming from. The team has upwards of 50 monitoring sites, Rifai said, and it looks for pollutants in sediment, water and tissue."The EPA has asked the states to come up with water bodies that do not meet Clean Water Act standards and with ways to address the problem," Rifai said. "For the first few years, we looked at dioxins, and now we're also looking at PCBs in every body of water in the Houston metro area, all the way to upper Galveston Bay. We're focused on past and current industrial pollutants."Dioxins are primarily byproducts resulting from paper mills, industrial waste incineration and water purification processes, but they also result from natural sources like forest fires in much smaller quantities. Rifai said her team believes the majority of dioxins found locally today are from historical sources.Meanwhile, PCBs, whose manufacture was banned in 1979, long were used as coolants and lubricants in electrical transformers and capacitors. Why they persist today in local waterways and seafood remains something of a mystery, Rifai said."Now, what we find with the PCBs, and what's got people worried, is, if indeed it's historical from before the ban, you would see it in the sediment," she explained. "But, we're actually seeing the patterns have shifted, as if there are some new sources of PCBs. Since the 1990s, we've had so much growth and industrial activity kicking back up that there might be some new material coming in."What those new sources are remains unclear, Rifai said, and materials that were manufactured with PCBs before the ban may still be in use."Historically with PCBs, if you've made a million transformers, you didn't have to destroy them. You use them up till they die," she said, adding that many outdated transformers were ruined by Hurricane Ike.In July 2008, the Texas Department of State Health Services issued an advisory for Galveston Bay, Chocolate Bay, East Bay, West Bay, Trinity Bay and contiguous waters, saying consumers should limit intake of spotted seatrout, also known as speckled trout, and gafttop catfish to no more than one 8-ounce meal a month. Furthermore, children, women who are nursing, pregnant or who may become pregnant are to have none. Long-term consumption of both dioxins and PCBs is believed to cause numerous health effects, including cancer."The problem is that these compounds are what is called 'bioaccumulative.' Once they get in the food chain, they accumulate – you cannot synthesize them," Rifai said. "A lot of the impacts of those compounds are subtle. They might be neurologic; they might be developmental. They're the kinds of things that do not show up for quite a while."The inclusion of new species in the advisories, Rifai said, has many implications, because commercial and recreational fishing is a $100-plus million industry annually. But, when her team was asked by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to do its own assessment of the state health department findings last year, the results were what Rifai expected."We told them that we thought the data was valid. We actually merged it with our data, and it was very consistent with what we see," she said. "We looked carefully at what was done, and, at the end of the day, I wasn't surprised."While the industrial history of Houston is amazing, Rifai said, residents and officials are dealing with the repercussions of it now and will continue to for a long time, especially in coastal communities."You have to balance the protection of the resource with the need for development and growth," she said. "You also have to think about areas really vulnerable to these extreme events, like hurricanes."She notes, however, that industrial partners have been critically important to her team's work."I'll tell you, industry in this area has come a long way. They really realize that they live in a community, ought to give back to the community and ought to work with the community. What's good for the water is going to be good for everyone around the water." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
July 16, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090715131553.htm | New Seasonal Hurricane Forecasting Model Created | Scientists at The Florida State University's Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) have developed a new computer model that they hope will predict with unprecedented accuracy how many hurricanes will occur in a given season. | After about five years developing and assessing the model, Associate Scholar Scientist Tim LaRow and his COAPS colleagues are putting the system to the test this year with their first-ever hurricane forecast. The COAPS model is one of only a handful of so–called "dynamical models" in the world being used to study seasonal hurricane activity.The COAPS model has predicted a below-average season in the Atlantic Ocean, with a mean of eight named storms and four hurricanes based partially on emerging El Nino conditions. During an El Nino, the warmer ocean temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific tend to suppress hurricane activity in the Atlantic. The historical seasonal average is 11 tropical storms and six hurricanes."Making a real-time forecast for the first time is always very interesting and a very good test of the model," LaRow said. "The hard part is in the waiting to see how the model verifies."LaRow and COAPS researchers Lydia Stefanova and Dong-Wook Shin issued their forecast on June 1, the official start of the six-month hurricane season. The tropics traditionally don't become active until the early fall months, so it's too early to tell if the forecast is on track. However, the researchers have good reason to feel confident.Before making this year's prediction, they used the model to perform 20 years of re-forecasts, or hindcasts, using the sea surface temperatures determined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on June 1 of every year from 1986 to 2005. They found a very high correlation between the model's predictions of the number and intensity of tropical cyclones and what actually occurred during those years.In addition, the model outperformed many statistical and other dynamical models, LaRow said. Statistical models use statistical relationships between oceanic and atmospheric variables to make a forecast, while dynamical models, such as the COAPS model, require major computing resources in order to make trillions of calculations using the equations of motion along with the best physical understanding of the atmosphere.The COAPS model uses the university's high-performance computer to synthesize massive amounts of information including atmospheric, ocean and land data. A key component of the COAPS model is NOAA's forecast of sea surface temperatures. But COAPS researchers continue to study their own model in an effort to better understand the relationship between sea surface temperatures and climate predictability."All models are unique, and what makes them unique is the physics inside them," LaRow said. "How and why our model's collection of physical processes captures the year-to-year variability so well needs to be better understood. This research will lead to even greater seasonal forecasting skill in the future."In 2006, COAPS received a $6.2 million, five-year grant from NOAA that has been used, in part, to support the development of this model. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
July 15, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090714103538.htm | Hurricane Carlos In 3D: Carlos Power Back Up To Hurricane Status | Carlos became a hurricane for about 24 hours over the previous weekend, then powered down to a tropical storm and now atmospheric conditions have enabled him to power back into a hurricane in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. | NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite has been capturing images of Carlos since it was born as tropical depression #4E last week. Scientists at NASA can use TRMM data to provide forecasters a 3-D look at the storm's cloud heights and rainfall, which is extremely helpful in forecasting."One of the interesting capabilities of the TRMM satellite is its ability to see through clouds with its Precipitation Radar (PR) and reveal the 3-D structure within storms such as Hurricane Carlos," said Hal Pierce, on the TRMM mission team in the Mesoscale Atmospheric Processes Branch at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.Pierce created a 3-D image of Carlos. He used data captured on July 13 when TRMM also got a "top down" view of the storm's rainfall, and created a 3-D image that shows thunderstorm tops reaching to almost 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) high in the eastern side of the storm.On Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 6 a.m. EDT (3 a.m. PDT), Carlos had regained hurricane status as a Category One storm on the Saffir-Simpson Scale with maximum sustained winds near 75 mph. Carlos was located near latitude 9.7 north and longitude 127.2 west. That's about 1,465 miles or southwest of the southern tip of Baja California. Carlos continues to move west near 9 mph and has a minimum central pressure of 987 millibars.Carlos is predicted to move to within about 720 miles southeast of the Hawaiian Islands on Saturday, July 18, 2009. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
July 14, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090706161304.htm | Cell Phone Towers Can Help Predict Big Floods | Though New Orleans residents were told to evacuate days before the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, no one could have predicted the real extent of the devastation. | Now researchers from Tel Aviv University say they have found a novel and reliable way to help predict the intensity of the next big flood, using common cell phone towers across the United States. Their model, which analyzes cell phone signals, adds a critical component to weather forecasting never before available."By monitoring the specific and fluctuating atmospheric moisture around cell phone towers throughout America, we can cheaply, effectively and reliably provide a more accurate 'critical moisture distribution' level for fine-tuning model predictions of big floods," says Prof. Pinhas Alpert, a geophysicist and head of Tel Aviv University's Porter School for Environmental Education.Prof. Alpert and his co-researchers Prof. Hagit Messer Yaron and doctoral fellow Noam David reported on their research in the April 2009 Cell phone towers emit radio waves that are diminished by moisture in the air, a factor that can be used to improve model warnings on flood levels. In addition, the researchers measured the rainfall distributions and were able to accurately estimate the size of impending floods before they struck. This was demonstrated in post-analysis of two case-studies of floods in the Judean Desert in Israel, where cell phone towers — and flash floods — are abundant.Using real data measurements collected from the towers, the researchers demonstrated how microwave links in a cellular network correlated with surface station humidity measurements. The data provided by cell phone towers is the missing link weather forecasters need to improve the accuracy of flood forecasting. The microwave data used in this study was supplied by two cellular providers Cellcom and Pelephone in Israel."Our method provides reliable measurement of moisture fields near the flood zone for the first time," notes Prof. Alpert, who also works with NASA on developing models to study global warming weather patterns. This new tool, he says, can add to the bigger picture of understanding climate change patterns in general."Accurate predictions of flooding were difficult before because there haven't been enough reliable measurements of moisture fields in remote locations," Prof. Alpert adds. Using the signals collected from cell phone towers as they communicate with base stations and our handsets, weather forecasters will now have a crucial missing piece of information for flood prediction that they never had before. It will permit forecasters and residents alike to more accurately gauge the danger they face from an impending flood.Because hundreds of thousands of cell phone towers are already in place, the Tel Aviv University invention can be adopted quickly. And cell phone companies are already collecting the data anyway, as Americans continue to ramp up their minutes of call time every month. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
July 3, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090702140835.htm | New Type Of El Nino Could Mean More Hurricanes Make Landfall | El Niño years typically result in fewer hurricanes forming in the Atlantic Ocean. But a new study suggests that the form of El Niño may be changing potentially causing not only a greater number of hurricanes than in average years, but also a greater chance of hurricanes making landfall, according to climatologists at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The study appears in the July 3, 2009, edition of the journal | "Normally, El Niño results in diminished hurricanes in the Atlantic, but this new type is resulting in a greater number of hurricanes with greater frequency and more potential to make landfall," said Peter Webster, professor at Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.That's because this new type of El Niño, known as El Niño Modoki (from the Japanese meaning "similar, but different"), forms in the Central Pacific, rather than the Eastern Pacific as the typical El Niño event does. Warming in the Central Pacific is associated with a higher storm frequency and a greater potential for making landfall along the Gulf coast and the coast of Central America.Even though the oceanic circulation pattern of warm water known as El Niño forms in the Pacific, it affects the circulation patterns across the globe, changing the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic. This regular type of El Niño (from the Spanish meaning "little boy" or "Christ child") is more difficult to forecast, with predictions of the December circulation pattern not coming until May. At first glance, that may seem like plenty of time. However, the summer before El Niño occurs, the storm patterns change, meaning that predictions of El Niño come only one month before the start of hurricane season in June. But El Niño Modoki follows a different prediction pattern."This new type of El Niño is more predictable," said Webster. "We're not sure why, but this could mean that we get greater warning of hurricanes, probably by a number of months."As to why the form of El Niño is changing to El Niño Modoki, that's not entirely clear yet, said Webster."This could be part of a natural oscillation of El Niño," he said. "Or it could be El Niño's response to a warming atmosphere. There are hints that the trade winds of the Pacific have become weaker with time and this may lead to the warming occurring further to the west. We need more data before we know for sure."In the study, Webster, along with Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Chair Judy Curry and research scientist Hye-Mi Kim used satellite data along with historical tropical storm records and climate models.The research team is currently looking at La Niña, the cooling of the surface waters in the Eastern and Central Pacific."In the past, La Nina has been associated with a greater than average number of North Atlantic hurricanes and La Nina seems to be changing its structure as well," said Webster. "We're vitally interested in understanding why El Niño-La Niña has changed. To determine this we need to run a series of numerical experiments with climate models." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
July 3, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090702110501.htm | Hurricane Katrina: Why Some People Stayed Behind | Hurricane Katrina was the largest natural disaster in U.S. history, claiming the lives of more than 1,800 victims and causing well over $100 billion in damage along the Gulf Coast. The 2005 storm breached every levee in New Orleans, flooding almost the entire city as well as the neighboring parishes. Yet a surprising number of people stayed behind and rode out the storm. | The general public, members of the media and government officials made instant analyses and character judgments of the people of New Orleans. But few people asked the residents themselves until recently. Stanford University psychologist Nicole Stephens and her colleagues decided to compare the views of outside observers with the perspectives of the New Orleans residents who actually rode out Katrina.The researchers conducted two surveys, one of observers and one of survivors. Observers were asked how they perceived survivors who left and those who did not, and survivors were asked to describe their own hurricane-related experiences. The study of observers—including a large group of relief workers, firefighters, and physicians—perceived those who evacuated their homes as more self-reliant and hardworking. Those who stayed, however, were described as careless, passive, depressed and hopeless even though the observers were well aware that these residents lacked the resources to leave (money, transportation, out-of-town relatives).When the psychologists surveyed actual Katrina survivors, they found that those who stayed behind did not feel powerless or passive. On the contrary, they saw themselves as connected with their neighbors, more communitarian than independent from others. Their stories emphasized their faith in God and their feelings of caring for others.The psychologists also took detailed measures of all the survivors' well-being—their mood, life satisfaction, mental health, drug and alcohol use. As they report in a recent issue of | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
July 2, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090627225307.htm | QuikScat Finds Tempests Brewing In 'Ordinary' Storms | "June is busting out all over," as the song says, and with it, U.S. residents along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts begin to gaze warily toward the ocean, aware that the hurricane season is revving up. In the decade since NASA's QuikScat satellite and its SeaWinds scatterometer launched in June 1999, the satellite has measured the wind speed and wind direction of these powerful storms, providing data that are increasingly used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Hurricane Center and other world forecasting agencies. The data help scientists detect these storms, understand their wind fields, estimate their intensity and track their movement. | But tropical cyclones aren't the only storms that generate hurricane-force winds. Among others that do is a type of storm that dominates the weather in parts of the United States and other non-tropical regions every fall, winter and into spring: extratropical cyclones.Scientists have long known that extratropical cyclones (also known as mid-latitude or baroclinic storms) sometimes produce hurricane-force winds. But before QuikScat, hurricane-force extratropical cyclones were thought to be relatively rare. Thanks to QuikScat, we now know that such storms occur much more frequently than previously believed, and the satellite has given forecasters an effective tool for routinely and consistently detecting and forecasting them.These storms, which occur near busy trans-oceanic shipping lanes, pose a significant threat to life and property for those on the high seas, generating high winds and waves up to 30 meters (100 feet) high. When they make landfall, in areas like Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, New England and the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast, they produce strong winds, high surf, coastal flooding, heavy rains, river flooding and even blizzard conditions.Take the "Hanukkah Eve" extratropical cyclone of Dec. 14-15, 2006, for example. That storm viciously raked the U.S. Pacific Northwest and British Columbia with torrential rainfall and hurricane-force winds exceeding 87 knots (100 miles per hour) in spots. Dozens of people were injured and 18 people lost their lives, while thousands of trees were downed, power was knocked out for more than 1.5 million residents and structural damage topped $350 million.NOAA defines an extratropical cyclone as "a storm system that primarily gets its energy from the horizontal temperature contrasts that exist in the atmosphere." These low pressure systems have associated cold fronts, warm fronts and occluded fronts. Tropical cyclones, in contrast, don't usually vary much in temperature at Earth's surface, and their winds are generated by the energy released as clouds and rain form in warm, moist, tropical air. While a tropical cyclone's strongest winds are near Earth's surface, the strongest winds in extratropical cyclones are about 12 kilometers (8 miles) up, in the tropopause. Tropical cyclones can become extratropical, and vice versa.Extratropical cyclones occur in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific year-round. Those with hurricane-force winds have been observed from September through May. Their frequency typically begins to increase in October, peaks in December and January, and tapers off sharply after March. They can range from less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) in diameter to more than 4,000 kilometers (nearly 2,500 miles) across. They typically last about five days, but their hurricane-force winds are usually short-lived--just 24 hours or less. Because they can intensify rapidly, they're often referred to as meteorological "bombs." Wind speeds in extratropical cyclones can vary from just 10 or 20 knots (12 to 23 miles per hour) to hurricane-force (greater than 63 knots, or 74 miles per hour). During their development, they can trek along at more than 30 knots (35 miles per hour), but they slow down as they mature. At their seasonal peak, up to eight such storms of varying intensity have been observed at once in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific.Early work by scientists at NASA, NOAA and other organizations demonstrated the effectiveness of using scatterometers for detecting these powerful and destructive winds. Scatterometers work by sending radar signals to the ocean surface and measuring the strength of the radar signals that bounce back. The higher the wind speed, the more the ocean surface is disturbed, and the stronger the reflection that is bounced back to the satellite.Among those who pioneered these efforts at NASA was Senior Research Scientist Timothy Liu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who used data from the NASA Scatterometer, the predecessor to QuikScat, to study the transition of tropical cyclones into extratropical storms in 1997. In addition, Robert Atlas of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., demonstrated that scatterometer data were able to improve predictions of extratropical storm strength and location.Joe Sienkiewicz, chief of the Ocean Applications Branch at NOAA's Ocean Prediction Center, Camp Springs, Md., says QuikScat data have raised the awareness of forecasters to the occurrence of hurricane-force intensity conditions in extratropical cyclones and have significantly advanced their short-term wind warning and forecast processes."QuikScat winds have given forecasters at NOAA's Ocean Prediction Center a high level of situational awareness over the data-sparse waters of the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans," he said. "Ocean Prediction Center forecasters daily examine every QuikScat pass and patch of wind and frequently base wind warning and forecast decisions solely on QuikScat winds. Through confidence gained from QuikScat, the National Weather Service began issuing warnings for dangerous hurricane-force winds in extratropical cyclones in December 2000."From 10 years of QuikScat, we have learned that hurricane force winds in extratropical cyclones occur more frequently than thought, are most frequent in winter months, and the conditions are most often observed south of the cyclone center," he added.Over the years, the number of storms observed with hurricane-force winds has steadily increased due to forecasters gaining confidence using the data, and improvements to the QuikScat data. From the fall of 2006 through 2008, NOAA's Ocean Prediction Center identified and issued warnings for 115 separate extratropical cyclones (64 in the Atlantic and 51 in the Pacific) that reached hurricane force.As confirmed in a 2008 study, QuikScat substantially extends the ability of forecasters to detect hurricane-force wind events in extratropical storms. For the studied case, QuikScat was able to identify more than three-and-a-half times as many hurricane-force events as combined data from the European ASCAT sensor on the METOP-A satellite, directly-measured buoy and ship information, and model predictions.Another study in 2002 found that incorporating QuikScat data increased the number of wind warnings the Ocean Prediction Center issued for extratropical cyclones by 30 percent in the North Atlantic and by 22 percent in the North Pacific. Between 2003 and 2006, the Ocean Prediction Center's forecasters successfully predicted hurricane-force winds two days in advance 58 percent of the time in the Atlantic and 44 percent in the Pacific. Considering that a successful forecast of hurricane-force winds requires accurate prediction of the timing and intensity of an explosive deepening cyclone, these numbers are impressive.QuikScat data have been instrumental in the ability to forecast hurricane-force extratropical cyclones several days in advance, while they are still well out over the ocean. Forecasters can use the data to determine which numerical weather prediction models are handling a storm the best, thereby improving the accuracy of forecasts and increasing warning lead times. QuikScat data are available to forecasters within three hours of acquisition.The availability of a consistent observing capability for extratropical cyclones from QuikScat has allowed NOAA to add a third "hurricane-force" warning category for extratropical cyclone winds, in addition to gale and storm, providing better warnings of a coming storm's severity. The U.S. Coast Guard broadcasts these warnings by radiofax, and they are posted online at: These extratropical cyclone warnings have a great economic impact on the $200 billion global marine shipping industry. A recent study estimates improvements to warning and forecast services due to QuikScat save the container and bulk shipping industry $135 million a year by reducing their exposure to hurricane-force wind conditions in non-tropical storms over the North Pacific and North Atlantic. Without QuikScat, the severity of many extratropical cyclones would not be determined. The data are also vital to the fishing industry, offshore energy industries, search and rescue organizations, and agencies that track and manage marine hazards like oil spills.Paul Chang, ocean winds science team lead at NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service/Center for Satellite Applications and Research, Camp Springs, Md., said ocean vector wind measurements from QuikScat have become a basic part of NOAA's day-to-day forecasting and warning processes. "The 10 years of observations from the QuikScat mission have provided critical information for the monitoring, modeling, forecasting and research of the atmosphere, oceans and climate," he said. For more information about QuickScat, visit | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
June 25, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090612163535.htm | Hurricanes: Increased Technology Offers Better Ways For Officials And Public To See The Storm Ahead | Louisiana State University's WAVCIS, or Wave-Current-Surge Information System for Coastal Louisiana, has a few new tricks up its sleeve in preparation for the 2009 hurricane season. | Drawing from a pool of scientific talent at the university, across the nation and Europe, WAVCIS now offers graphic, easy-to-understand model outputs projecting wave height, current depths and tracks, salinity ratios and water temperature measurements that not only provide state-of-the-art guidance to emergency management officials, but also give federal and state agencies such as the United States Navy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Weather Service, National Hurricane Center and Louisiana Department of National Resources new and improved ways to test their own modeling accuracy."I believe WAVCIS is likely the most comprehensive program in the entire nation," said Gregory Stone, director of both the WAVCIS program and the Coastal Studies Institute and also the James P. Morgan Distinguished Professor at LSU. "We now have 60 to 84 hour advance forecasting capabilities due to our satellite link-ups with NOAA and our supercomputing capabilities. Because of these advancements, we are in much better shape for the 2009 hurricane season to provide valuable information than we were in the past."WAVCIS operates by deploying equipment in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico. Currently, they have sensors attached to numerous oil platforms. Instruments are attached to towers on the platforms and allow meteorological measurements – air temperature, wind speed and direction, visibility – to be made; state-of-the-art oceanographic sensors are placed underwater and on the sea floor.Advanced technology, including the Acoustic Doppler Profiler, an instrument that Stone's group has helped perfect in real time with the private sector, provides a very comprehensive overview of current velocities from the sea bed to the surface in addition to wave conditions on the sea surface."In a normal weather situation, WAVCIS links with the satellites and retrieves up-to-date information every hour. This information is then immediately supplied to computer models at LSU's WAVCIS lab and the data are posted on the WAVCIS Web site," said Stone. "However, during a hurricane or other extreme weather events, we have the capacity to increase the frequency of these link-ups. We won't have the luxury of waiting an hour during the approach of a hurricane – it's critical that we can see what's going on out there in 15 to 30 minute intervals in order to accurately assess the situation."The WAVCIS group, a component of LSU's world famous Coastal Studies Institute, has sensors all throughout the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, most of the equipment used by WAVCIS is developed and maintained in-house at the Coastal Studies Institute's fabrication shop. Through a close and reciprocal relationship with NOAA's National Data Buoy Center, WAVCIS can also access that group's sensors, giving the system a gulf-wide look at emerging trends in waves and currents, which can be very important during the approach of a tropical cyclone."Things such as the maximum wave height, wind speeds and storm surge, will play an integral role in issues concerning public safety," said Stone. "For example, the development of certain currents, such as the Loop current in the Gulf of Mexico, allows for almost immediate intensification of storms. That's why having an easy-to-understand and comprehensive end product was so important to my team and the Coastal Studies Institute, for example the Earth Scan Lab and the Southern Regional Climate Center, during the development stages. When it's crunch time and people are nervous, we want the facts to be clear."In addition to being a very active research group and providing graduate and undergraduate students with hands-on opportunities in an internationally-acclaimed lab, WAVCIS also provides other entities with the opportunity to test their own modeling accuracy. "By looking at the models they developed and then comparing them to ours and our measurements offshore, they can determine how accurate their models currently are and go about fine-tuning if necessary. This strengthens our knowledge of the oceanographic and coastal environment. Given the vulnerability of, for example coastal Louisiana and the oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico to erosion and hurricane impacts, it is important that the Federal Government, State of Louisiana and the oil and gas industry continue to support this effort," Stone said.WAVCIS models are available on | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
June 21, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090617123702.htm | Beating The Radar: Getting A Jump On Storm Prediction | Satellite observation of cloud temperatures may be able to accurately predict severe thunderstorms up to 45 minutes earlier than relying on traditional radar alone, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center. | Scientists from the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) have developed a way to measure temperature changes in the tops of clouds to improve forecast times for rapidly growing storms."The value of detecting and analyzing these changes is that we can get up to a 45-minute jump on radar detection of the same storm system. A 'nowcast' becomes a 'forecast,'" says CIMSS scientist Wayne Feltz.Clouds start cooling long before radar can identify them as storms. As a warm cumulus cloud grows and expands upward into higher altitudes, it will rapidly cool. Rapid cloud-top cooling indicates that a cloud top is rising into the frigid upper reaches of the atmosphere and can reveal the formation of a severe storm.Cloud temperatures can be measured by the wavelengths of light they radiate in the near-infrared and infrared frequencies. Current geostationary satellites — satellites that stay over the same location on Earth — over the U.S. can discern five different bands in these frequencies, each band revealing a different state of cloud development. Looking down from space, the satellite can determine whether the cloud top consists of liquid water, supercooled water or even ice.By running high-speed five-minute satellite scans through a carefully designed computer algorithm, the scientists can quickly analyze cloud top temperature changes to look for signs of storm formation. "We are looking for transitions," says Feltz. "Does the cloud top consist of liquid water that is cooling rapidly? That could signal a possible convective initiation."Feltz and other CIMSS colleagues, including Kris Bedka and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist Tim Schmit, demonstrated their "Convective Initiation Nowcast" and "Cloud Top Cooling Rate" products at NOAA's annual Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT), held May 4-June 5 at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.The HWT is designed to accelerate the transition of promising new meteorological insights and technologies into advance forecasting and warnings for hazardous weather events throughout the United States."The Hazardous Weather Testbed brings in outside experts in all areas, a melting pot of people to encourage collaboration and interactions and proposal opportunities," Feltz says. "The point of this is working with forecasters in the field — the Weather Service, the Storm Prediction Center, the Hurricane Center — whoever is interested in looking at more advanced satellite products." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
June 16, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090615144213.htm | Do And Don't Of Building In Hurricane-prone Areas | Better building practices for structures in hurricane-prone regions will be the focus of a paper next month in Caribbean Construction Magazine by NJIT architecture professor Rima Taher, PhD. Taher has written extensively about best building design and construction practices to reduce wind pressures on building surfaces and to resist high winds and hurricanes in residential or commercial construction. | She is a civil/structural engineer who teaches at NJIT's College of Architecture and Design. Her courses include topics related to wind and earthquakes with guidelines and recommendations for better design and construction in hurricane and earthquake prone areas. Taher also helps prepare architecture graduates for the certifying exam and has authored a book on the topic. In 2007, her article about the design of low-rise buildings for extreme wind events appeared in the Journal of Architectural Engineering."Certain home shapes and roof types can make a big difference," is a common refrain in all her work.Her recommendations in the forthcoming article should be heeded by anyone building in high wind regions. They include the following.Design buildings with square, hexagonal or even octagonal floor plans with roofs of multiple slopes such as a four-sloped hip roof. These roofs perform better under wind forces than the gable roofs with two slopes. Gable roofs are common only because they are cheaper to build. Research and testing demonstrate that a 30-degree roof slope will have the best results.Wind forces on a roof tend to uplift it. "This explains why roofs blow off during extreme wind events," Taher said. To combat uplift, she advises connecting roofs to walls strongly with nails, not staples. Stapled roofs were banned in Florida after Hurricane Andrew. The use of hurricane clips is recommended. The choice of roofing is important. Different roofing systems perform differently under hurricane conditions. In tile roofs, loose tiles often become wind-borne debris threatening other structures.Aim for strong connections between the structure and foundation. Structural failure-- one structural element triggering the collapse of another—can be progressive.Hurricane shutters can protect glazing from wind-borne debris. Various designs are available.Roof overhangs are subject to wind uplift forces which could trigger a roof failure. In the design of the hurricane-resistant home, the length of these overhangs should be limited to about 20 inches.The design of the researched cyclonic home includes simple systems to reduce the local wind stresses at the roof's lower edges such as a notched frieze or a horizontal grid. Install the latter at the level of the gutters along the homes' perimeter.An elevated structure on an open foundation reduces the risk of damage from flooding and storm-driven water. All foundation piles must be strengthened by bracing and should penetrate deep enough into the soil to reduce the risk of scour. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
June 3, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090602175417.htm | Atlantic And East Pacific Ocean Hurricane Seasons Begin For 2009 | Summer soon begins in the Northern Hemisphere and, on June 1st, the Atlantic hurricane season kicks off. What do Atlantic and Pacific Ocean surface temperatures and heights tell forecasters about what they can expect this season? Although peak hurricane time doesn't arrive until late-summer and early fall, there are some oceanic signals that give a hint of coming activity and NASA satellites are helping to provide that data. | The Atlantic Ocean Hurricane Season runs from June 1 to November 30. In the eastern Pacific Ocean, Hurricane season runs between May 15 and November 30 each year. These dates simply border the times when most tropical cyclone activity happens in this region. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Hurricane Center forecasts tropical cyclones (the generic name for hurricanes, typhoons, tropical storms, tropical depressions) in the eastern Pacific and Atlantic. NASA provides satellite data and conducts tropical cyclone research.NASA has several satellites in orbit around the Earth that are used to study different aspects of these tropical cyclones, and NASA scientists conduct hurricane research all through the year. Satellites include the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, Aqua, QuikScat, CloudSat, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), JASON-1, OSTM/Jason-2, Landsat, and Terra. Except for GOES, which is managed by NOAA, all missions are managed either out of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. or NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA Goddard's GOES Project Office generates GOES images and animations.Using all of these satellites and their instruments, NASA scientists gather data on many factors that determine if a tropical cyclone may strengthen or weaken. Data includes: storm and surface winds; sea surface heights and temperatures; rainfall intensity and area; lightning; cloud water; water vapor; cloud heights, extent of cloud cover and cloud temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure; cloud development; and size of the storm.NASA data currently indicate that sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic are below normal. These cooler than normal ocean temperatures could "starve" developing hurricanes of their driving force, which are waters warmer than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, thus suggesting a damping of hurricanes.Despite Atlantic waters being cooler than normal, the first tropical depression of the Atlantic season formed on May 27 around 11 a.m. EDT in the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream about 310 miles south of Providence, Rhode Island. It then moved away from the mainland U.S. and into cooler waters which led to its dissipation.Meanwhile in the eastern Pacific, the La Niña conditions of the past few years have faded away. This is also good news for the coming hurricane season, as La Niña tends to drive the jet stream farther north, decreasing the hurricane damping wind shear over the tropics. The jet stream is a ribbon of fast moving air in the upper troposphere that guides low pressure areas (storms) and fronts.But, it is very early to forecast hurricane activity since much can change during the summer. Will El Niño develop in the Pacific or will La Niña make a surprise return? Will the Atlantic warm up over the summer? And there are some wild cards. Since 1995, the Atlantic has entered multi-decadal conditions that favor increased hurricane activity. This loads the dice for more hurricanes.In the Pacific, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation's (PDO) characteristic warm "horseshoe" and cool wedge pattern is still strong in the sea surface temperature and sea-level height images. The PDO is a long-term ocean temperature fluctuation of the Pacific Ocean that waxes and wanes approximately every 10 to 20 years.Most recent NASA sea-surface temperature and height data clearly illustrate the persistence of this basin-wide pattern. "While this PDO pattern tends to make the formation of a new El Niño event less likely, the warm waters in the western Pacific favor a very active western Pacific typhoon ("hurricane" in the eastern Pacific and Atlantic) season and inhibit the hurricane damping condition over the Atlantic and Caribbean," said Dr. William Patzert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.Patzert sees merit in the cautionary Atlantic hurricane outlook released by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center in May. "It is the beginning of a long summer and oceanic and atmospheric conditions can change dramatically," Patzert said. Statistics and probabilities of today have huge wiggle room.By fall, today's conditions can change. Being vigilant and preparing for a major hurricane is still the best way to prepare for any hurricane season. "Along hurricane-prone coasts and areas, be ready; you can be clobbered no matter what the expert outlook is today," said Patzert.Whenever and wherever a tropical cyclone forms, NASA satellite data will provide data that will help forecasters get a better idea of how it's going to behave. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
June 1, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090529135410.htm | Positive Feedback Hint Between Tropical Cyclones And Global Warming | Tropical cyclones could be a significant source of the deep convection that carries moist air upward to the stratosphere, where it can influence climate, according to Harvard University researchers David M. Romps and Zhiming Kuang. | Using 23 years of infrared satellite imagery, global tropical cyclone best-track data, and reanalysis of tropopause temperature, the authors found that tropical cyclones contribute a disproportionate amount of the tropical deep convection that overshoots the troposphere and reaches the stratosphere.Their findings appear in a recent issue of Tropical cyclones account for only 7 percent of the deep convection in the tropics, but 15 percent of the convection that reaches the stratosphere, the researchers found. They conclude that tropical cyclones could play a key role in adding water vapor to the stratosphere, which has been shown to increase surface temperatures.Because global warming is expected to lead to changes in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones, the authors believe their results suggest the possibility of a feedback mechanism between tropical cyclones and global climate. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
May 29, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090527103528.htm | Lessons From The Past: Research Examines How Past Communities Coped With Climate Change | Research led by the University of Leicester suggests people today and in future generations should look to the past in order to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. | The dangers of rising sea levels, crop failures and extreme weather were all faced by our ancestors who learnt to adapt and survive in the face of climate change.Dr Jago Cooper, of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, has been studying the archaeology of climate change in the Caribbean as part of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship.The international study involvess researchers from Britain, Cuba and Canada. Dr Cooper said: “Populations in the Caribbean, from 5000 BC to AD 1492, successfully lived through a 5m rise in relative sea levels, marked variation in annual rainfall and periodic intensification of hurricane activity.“This research examines the archaeological lessons that can inform current responses to the impacts of climate change in the Caribbean. I have examined the relationship between long and short-term effects of climate change and past human engagement with the geographical, ecological and meteorological consequences.”“A key focus of the research has been to investigate past mitigation of the impacts of climate change through the analysis of changes in settlement structures, food procurement strategies and household architecture.”The study is part of a long term project, begun in 1997, that includes a wide-ranging study of archaeological and paleoenvironmental data. Key to the research has been to understand how the past can inform the future.Said Dr Cooper: “We have acquired archaeological information that has then been closely correlated in space and time with the long and short-term impacts of climate change. It has then been possible to evaluate the relative advantages and disadvantages of past cultural practices in the face of environmental change and establish lessons that will contribute to contemporary mitigation strategies. “Following the end of the last Ice Age, the people of the Caribbean have had to cope with a relative sea level rise of 5m over 5,000 years. Hurricanes led to storm surges that reached inland more than ever. Groundwater became contaminated with salt and the land was waterlogged.But the researchers found that far from abandoning life by the coast and moving further inland, people continued to live by the shore- and even built houses on stilts over a lagoon.An ancient site in Cuba, Los Buchillones, that is currently out to sea “represents a way of living that capitalises on hundreds or even thousands of years of experience.”Dr Cooper warns that modern settlements are more at risk of flooding because they are constructed in more vulnerable places. In fact, indigenous settlement locations over water could make homes less at risk of flooding as floodwater could flow beneath the homes and inland rather than pour into the houses.This ongoing research has looked at past mitigation strategies, assessed how pre-Colombian settlements were located close to cave complexes that acted as refuges during times of past hurricanes, how the architecture of homes were constructed from local resources allowing people to rebuild them easily upon their return. It also reveals how local populations diversified their food production to mitigate against resource scarcity.The research is described in this week’s | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
May 28, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090526171811.htm | Pediatric Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Linked To Video Games After Hurricane Ike | Hours after Hurricane Ike roared ashore in Texas, more than two million homes were without power, which left some scrambling to preserve food and others looking for ways to entertain children, a move that proved to be, in some instances, poisonous. Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston found that 75 percent of children treated for carbon monoxide poisoning caused by gasoline-powered electrical generators were playing video games. | When interviewed by researchers, families reported using the generators, which they placed inside the home or an attached garage, to power televisions and video game systems.“This was a new experience for us. We usually have patients arriving in the emergency department with carbon monoxide poisoning because they tried to keep food fresh, run a fan or home air conditioner, but not power electronic gadgets,” said Caroline Fife, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the UT Health Science Center at Houston. “We were also targeting messages about generator safety to adults. Text messages were sent out through a cell phone provider with safety tips. Next time, we are going to have to consider reaching out to children. Many of them now have their own cell phones.”Of the 37 individuals treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after the storm, 20 were under the age of 20. In nine of those cases, researchers were able to speak with families to determine why a generator was being used. In 75 percent of those cases, the generator was used to run video games. The data are published in the June 1 issue of the Journal of Pediatrics.All of the patients were treated at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, the only hospital in Houston with a hyperbaric oxygen treatment center that is capable of treating patients with carbon monoxide poisoning.Carbon monoxide is a product of combustion of organic matter with an insufficient oxygen supply. When kept inside the home generators give off carbon monoxide and people can begin breathing it in causing symptoms such as headaches, nausea and flu-like effects. If exposed for a longer length of time, death can occur. Carbon monoxide poisoning is the most common cause of poisoning death in the United States. A hyperbaric chamber is used to give 100 percent oxygen under increased atmospheric pressure to patients exposed to carbon monoxide.“Discovering that generators are so frequently used to power entertainment devices for children suggests that school programs should be considered in states at risk for hurricane-related power outages,” Fife said. “We also learned that using cell phone providers to send out text messages might be effective. If a future storms approaches, we hope to enlist the help of more providers and send out messages to the most vulnerable populations, our children.”Co-authors at the UT Health Science Center include: Latisha A. Smith, M.D., associate professor of medicine; Erik A. Maus, M.D., assistant professor of medicine; James J. McCarthy, M.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine; Michelle Koehler, UT Medical School student and Trina Hawkins, M.S.N. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
May 10, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090501201353.htm | Tree-Killing Hurricanes Could Contribute To Global Warming | A first-of-its kind, long-term study of hurricane impact on U.S. trees shows that hurricane damage can diminish a forest’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming, from the atmosphere. Tulane University researchers from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology examined the impact of tropical cyclones on U.S. forests from 1851–2000 and found that changes in hurricane frequency might contribute to global warming. | The results will be published in an upcoming issue of the Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, and release it when they die -- either from old age or from trauma, such as hurricanes. The annual amount of carbon dioxide a forest removes from the atmosphere is determined by the ratio of tree growth to tree mortality each year.When trees are destroyed en masse by hurricanes, not only will there be fewer trees in the forest to absorb greenhouse gases, but forests could eventually become emitters of carbon dioxide, warming the climate. And other studies, notes Tulane ecologist Jeff Chambers, indicate that hurricanes will intensify with a warming climate.“If landfalling hurricanes become more intense or more frequent in the future, tree mortality and damage exceeding 50 million tons of tree biomass per year would result in a net carbon loss from U.S. forest ecosystems,” says Chambers.The study, which was led by Tulane postdoctoral research associate Hongcheng Zeng, establishes an important baseline to evaluate changes in the frequency and intensity of future landfalling hurricanes.Using field measurements, satellite image analyses, and empirical models to evaluate forest and carbon cycle impacts, the researchers established that an average of 97 million trees have been affected each year for the past 150 years over the entire United States, resulting in a 53-million ton annual biomass loss and an average carbon release of 25 million tons. Forest impacts were primarily located in Gulf Coast areas, particularly southern Texas and Louisiana and south Florida, while significant impacts also occurred in eastern North Carolina.Chambers compares the data from this study to a 2007 study that showed that a single storm – Hurricane Katrina -- destroyed nearly 320 million trees with a total biomass loss equivalent to 50–140 percent of the net annual U.S. carbon sink in forest trees.“The bottom line,” says Chambers, “is that any sustained increase in hurricane tree biomass loss above 50 million tons would potentially undermine our efforts to reduce human fossil fuel carbon emissions.”Study contributors include Tulane lab researchers Robinson Negrón-Juárez and David Baker; George Hurtt of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire; and Mark Powell at the Hurricane Research Division, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For more information contact Tulane’s Office of Public Relations. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
April 28, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090424114650.htm | Levees Cannot Fully Eliminate Risk Of Flooding To New Orleans, Report Says | Levees and floodwalls surrounding New Orleans -- no matter how large or sturdy -- cannot provide absolute protection against overtopping or failure in extreme events, says a new report by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council. The voluntary relocation of people and neighborhoods from areas that are vulnerable to flooding should be considered as a viable public policy option, the report says. If relocation is not feasible, an alternative would be to elevate the first floor of buildings to at least the 100-year flood level. | The report is the fifth and final one to provide recommendations to the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET), formed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to examine why New Orleans' hurricane-protection system failed during Hurricane Katrina and how it can be strengthened. The previous four reports by the NAE and Research Council examined various draft volumes of the IPET. This report reviews the 7,500-page IPET draft final report, reflects upon the lessons learned from Katrina, and offers advice for how to improve the hurricane-protection system in the New Orleans area. Although some of the report's recommendations to enhance hurricane preparedness have been widely acknowledged for years, many have not been adequately implemented, said the committee that wrote the report. For instance, levees and floodwalls should be viewed as a way to reduce risks from hurricanes and storm surges, not as measures that completely eliminate risk. As with any structure built to protect against flooding, the New Orleans hurricane-protection system promoted a false sense of security that areas behind the structures were absolutely safe for habitation and development, the report says. Unfortunately, there are substantial risks that never were adequately communicated to the public and undue optimism that the 350-mile structure network could provide reliable flood protection, the committee noted.Comprehensive flood planning and risk management should be based on a combination of structural and nonstructural measures, including the option of voluntary relocations, floodproofing and elevation of structures, and evacuation, the committee urged. Rebuilding the New Orleans area and its hurricane-protection system to its pre-Katrina state would leave the city and its inhabitants vulnerable to similar disasters. Instead, settlement in areas most vulnerable to flooding should be discouraged, and some consideration should be given to new designs of the New Orleans metro hurricane-protection system. As part of the future design, relocation of some structures and residents would help improve public safety and reduce flood damages. For structures in hazardous areas and residents who do not relocate, the committee recommended major floodproofing measures -- such as elevating the first floor of buildings to at least the 100-year flood level and strengthening electric power, water, gas, and telecommunication supplies. Also, a comprehensive evacuation program should be established that includes well-designed and tested evacuation plans; improved local and regional shelters that would make evacuations less imposing; and long-term strategies that could enhance the efficiency of evacuations, such as locating facilities for the ill and elderly away from hazardous areas. Furthermore, the 100-year flood level -- which is a crucial flood insurance standard -- is inadequate for flood protection structures in heavily populated areas such as New Orleans, where the failure of the system would be catastrophic. Use of this standard in the New Orleans area has escalated the costs of protection, encouraged settlement in areas behind levees, and resulted in losses of life and vast federal expenditures following numerous flood and hurricane disasters, the committee said. Regarding IPET's draft final report, the committee concluded that it contained important advances in characterizing and understanding the nature of Gulf hurricane storm surges and waves -- in particular explaining the storm surge generated by Hurricane Katrina, how waters from the surge entered the New Orleans metro region, and the amount of flooding across the city. In addition, IPET's studies have made significant contributions to simulating hurricane impacts, characterizing the collective effects of hurricane damage, and improving knowledge of regional vulnerability to hurricanes and storm surge.However, the final IPET report should provide a better explanation of its methods to evaluate flood risks, the committee said. The final report also should be written in a more clear and organized manner, using layman's terminology that can be understood by the public and officials. Such clarity is lacking in Volume VIII, which was the principal focus of the final two years of IPET's study. This volume assesses the risks posed by future tropical storms and contains inundation maps that show the areas at most risk for future flooding. These maps are important to citizens, businesses, and government agencies for planning resettlement and redevelopment in the region, but the volume contains limited discussion of the implications of these maps. Moreover, at times the extensive technical information presented in the volume overshadows key results.The committee also recommended that a professional technical firm prepare a second document for the public and officials that would be shorter and focus on explaining IPET report results and implications for reconstruction and resettlement. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
April 21, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090421080357.htm | Caribbean At Risk Of Tsunami, Disaster Experts Warn | Up to 30,000 residents and tourists could be under threat from a newly discovered tsunami risk in the Caribbean, according to experts in disaster risk management. | The heavily populated coast of Guadeloupe will have little warning if a tsunami is triggered by the collapse of a volcano on the nearby island of Dominica.A team of geologists, led by Dr Richard Teeuw from the University of Portsmouth, have discovered that a flank of the volcano Morne aux Diables ("Devils' Peak") shows signs of collapse and if so, a million-ton chunk of rock could crash into the sea, producing tsunami waves up to almost 3 metres (10 feet) high.Such a rock fall could also weaken three million tones of rock upslope, potentially resulting in much larger landslides and waves of up to five metres. Dr Teeuw said: “It’s not a case of if this landslide and tsunami will happen, but when. The trigger will probably be a major earthquake, occurring after the heavy rain and coastal erosion of the hurricane season. It could happen in a hundred years or it could happen next week. “Guadeloupe is a densely populated island with popular tourist beaches, many of which are wide with low angle gradients, which leads to ‘tsunami run-up’ and increased wave heights. In places, there is no protection from coral reef which otherwise might absorb some of the tsunami wave energy.“There would be damage to property and if people were on the beach then there could be loss of life. This part of the world is well-prepared for hurricane hazards, but is relatively unprepared for the rapid impact of a tsunami.”The vulnerable area of rock was left exposed several thousand years ago when the flank of the volcano collapsed into the sea. Dr Teeuw will study the seabed for evidence of an ancient tsunami next year. Since the original collapse, coastal erosion has undercut cliffs along the over-steepened margin of the volcano, leaving the remaining flank of the volcano unstable. Dr Teeuw and colleagues made their discovery after carrying out geomorphological surveys backed up by 3-D images from Google Earth which show clearly visible tension cracks. The results convinced them that they were looking at a serious landslide and tsunami hazard. The Guadeloupe archipelago is about 50 kilometres north of Dominica and tsunami waves would hit its shores within minutes of the volcano’s collapse, giving little chance to warn people on the coast. The island of Dominica has the highest concentrations of potentially active volcanoes in the world. The area is regularly exposed to hurricanes and occasional severe seismic activity.Dr Teeuw and his team of students and geoscientists will return to Dominica this summer, part-funded by the Royal Geographical Society, for further geomorphological surveys, to better understand the probable size of the various landslide zones on the flanks of Morne aux Diable. A further survey is planned for 2010, when the seafloor along the margin of the volcano will be examined, allowing better estimates of the likely tsunami hazard. Examining the age of the sediment on the seabed will also help to determine when past coastal landslides occurred. Dr Teeuw said: “The earthquake associated with the ancient flank-collapse of Morne aux Diables volcano was probably much larger than any experienced around Dominica in historical times. If so, that has serious implications, raising the possibility of rare, but catastrophic, tsunami waves in the Caribbean region.”Dr Teeuw wants to raise awareness about potential tsunami hazards to emergency planners, disaster managers and the people of Guadeloupe and Dominica to help reduce their vulnerability and the risk of disaster.He made the discovery while supervising student research projects around Morne aux Diables volcano and his work, published in the newsletter of the American Geophysical Union ( | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
April 21, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090420121421.htm | Cyclones Spurt Water Into Stratosphere, Feeding Global Warming | Scientists at Harvard University have found that tropical cyclones readily inject ice far into the stratosphere, possibly feeding global warming. | The finding, published in "Since water vapor is an important greenhouse gas, an increase of water vapor in the stratosphere would warm the Earth's surface," says David M. Romps, a research associate in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Science. "Our finding that tropical cyclones are responsible for many of the clouds in the stratosphere opens up the possibility that these storms could affect global climate, in addition to the oft-mentioned possibility of climate change affecting the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones."Romps and co-author Zhiming Kuang, assistant professor of climate science in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, were intrigued by earlier data suggesting that the amount of water vapor in the stratosphere has grown by roughly 50 percent over the past 50 years. Scientists are currently unsure why this increase has occurred; the Harvard researchers sought to examine the possibility that tropical cyclones might have contributed by sending a large fraction of their clouds into the stratosphere.Using infrared satellite data gathered from 1983 to 2006, Romps and Kuang analyzed towering cloud tops associated with thousands of tropical cyclones, many of them near the Philippines, Mexico, and Central America. Their analysis demonstrated that in a cyclone, narrow plumes of miles-tall storm clouds can rise so explosively through the atmosphere that they often push into the stratosphere.Romps and Kuang found that tropical cyclones are twice as likely as other storms to punch into the normally cloud-free stratosphere, and four times as likely to inject ice deep into the stratosphere."It is ... widely believed that global warming will lead to changes in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones," Romps and Kuang write in Geophysical Research Letters. "Therefore, the results presented here establish the possibility for a feedback between tropical cyclones and global climate."Typically, very little water is allowed passage through the stratosphere's lower boundary, known as the tropopause. Located some 6 to 11 miles above the Earth's surface, the tropopause is the coldest part of the Earth's atmosphere, making it a barrier to the lifting of water vapor into the stratosphere: As air passes slowly through the tropopause, it gets so cold that most of its water vapor freezes out and falls away.But if very deep clouds, such as those in a tropical cyclone that can rise through the atmosphere at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, can punch through the tropopause too quickly for this to happen, they can deposit their ice in the warmer overlying stratosphere, where it then evaporates."This suggests that tropical cyclones could play an important role in setting the humidity of the stratosphere," Romps and Kuang write.Romps and Kuang's research was funded by the Eppley Foundation and NASA. | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
April 16, 2009 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090413141251.htm | NASA Experiment Stirs Up Hope For Forecasting Deadliest Cyclones | NASA satellite data and a new modeling approach could improve weather forecasting and save more lives when future cyclones develop. | About 15 percent of the world's tropical cyclones occur in the northern Indian Ocean, but because of high population densities along low-lying coastlines, the storms have caused nearly 80 percent of cyclone-related deaths around the world. Incomplete atmospheric data for the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea make it difficult for regional forecasters to provide enough warning for mass evacuations.In the wake of last year's Cyclone Nargis -- one of the most catastrophic cyclones on record -- a team of NASA researchers re-examined the storm as a test case for a new data integration and mathematical modeling approach. They compiled satellite data from the days leading up to the May 2 landfall of the storm and successfully "hindcasted" Nargis' path and landfall in Burma."Hindcasting" means that the modelers plotted the precise course of the storm. In addition, the retrospective results showed how forecasters might now be able to produce multi-day advance warnings in the Indian Ocean and improve advance forecasts in other parts of the world. Results from their study were published March 26 in Geophysical Research Letters."There is no event in nature that causes a greater loss of life than Northern Indian Ocean cyclones, so we have a strong motivation to improve advance warnings," said the study's lead author, Oreste Reale, an atmospheric modeler with the Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center, a partnership between NASA and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.In late April 2008, weather forecasters tracking cyclone Nargis initially predicted the storm would make landfall in Bangladesh. But the storm veered unexpectedly to the east and intensified from a category 1 storm to a category 4 in just 24 hours. When it made landfall in Burma (Myanmar) on May 2, the storm and its surge killed more than 135,000 people, displaced tens of thousands, and destroyed about $12 billion in property.In the months that followed, Reale and his U.S.-based team tested the NASA-created Data Assimilation and Forecasting System known as GEOS-5 and its NASA/NOAA-created analysis technique using data from the days leading up to Nargis because the storm was particularly fatal and highly characteristic of cyclones in the northern Indian Ocean.Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal – stretching from the southern tip of India to Thailand – are particularly difficult to analyze because of "blind spots" in available atmospheric data for individual storms, as well as the small dimensions of the Bay, which ensure that storms do not have much time to develop or circulate. In most instances, regionally strong wind shear suppresses cyclone development.But when tropical cyclones do form, flooding waves and storm surges can quickly reach the narrow basin's shores. And that unusual wind shear, which is fueled by large temperature contrasts between sea and land, can also lead to erratic storm tracks. Forecasting is also made particularly difficult by the "blind spots," Reale noted. Land-based weather stations monitor the edges of the bay, but they cannot see much when a storm is brewing several hundred miles from the coastline.Forecasters from the India Meteorological Department and the U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center lack access to the fleet of "hurricane hunting" airplanes that fly through Atlantic storms. They have to rely on remote satellite measurements that can only assess atmospheric and ocean temperatures under "clear-sky," or cloudless, conditions -- not exactly common in the midst of a cyclone.In their modeling experiment, Reale's team detected and tracked Nargis' path by employing novel 3-dimensional satellite imagery and atmospheric profiles from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite to see into the heart of the storm.AIRS has become increasingly important to weather forecasting because of its ability to show changes in atmospheric temperature and moisture at varying altitudes. Until recently, many weather modelers were only using AIRS data from cloud-free skies.In 2007, atmospheric scientist Joel Susskind of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., successfully demonstrated through a technique developed by NASA research scientist Moustafa Chahine that accurate atmospheric temperatures could be obtained using real (versus hypothetical data in a 2003 Susskind study) AIRS partly-cloudy data. Reale's team used the temperature data products from Susskind's work to run the NASA model with the added information from partially-cloudy areas of sky that traditionally got left out.AIRS cloudy-sky data can now be integrated into what are called shared data assimilation systems, which combine millions of data points from Earth-observing satellites, instrumented ocean buoys, ground-based sensors, aircraft-based instruments, and man-on-the-scene observations. Data assimilation transforms the data into digital local maps that models can "read" to produce either hindcasts or advance projections of future weather conditions.Lau, chief of Goddard's Laboratory for Atmospheres, believes that regional forecasting agencies monitoring the region can readily access AIRS' data daily and optimize forecasts for cyclones in the Indian Ocean. According to Lau, the same technique can be useful to forecasts of hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the western Pacific, particularly when the storm is formed over open oceans out of flight range of hurricane-hunting airplanes."With this approach, we can now better define cyclones at the early stages and track them in the models to know what populations may be most at risk," explained Reale. "And every 12 hours we gain in these forecasts means a gain in our chances to reduce loss of life." | Hurricanes Cyclones | 2,009 |
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