HRD at the American Meteorological Society Centennial Meeting

HRD scientists recently attended the 100th American Meteorological Society Meeting in Boston. There, they presented 33 oral presentations and 10 posters. Left to right: Mu-Chich Ko, Andrew Kren, Joe Cione, Karina Apodaca, Michael Mueller, Sarah Ditchek, Steve Diaz, Jonathan Zawislak, Andy Hazelton, Lisa Bucci, Frank Marks, Shirley Murillo, Xuejin Zhang, John Cortinas, Eric Uhlhorn, and …

Paper on the intensification of tropical cyclones in wind shear published in Mausam

Hurricanes are fed by energy from the warm ocean. The center of a hurricane is surrounded by tall clouds, called cumulus clouds, that produce the heat needed to keep the spin, what we call vorticity, in the hurricanes going. When there are a lot of cumulus clouds around the hurricane's center, the hurricane spins more rapidly. However, …

Paper on asymmetries in the tropical cyclone during rapid intensification published in The Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences

You can reach the study at https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JAS-D-19-0067.1.

HRD Monthly Science Meeting of December 2019

December’s science meeting, hosted by the National Hurricane Center, consisted of seven presentations: Michael Brennan (NHC): “NHC Forecast Verification and Challenges”Mark DeMaria (NHC): “A New Method for Creating a 2-D Surface Wind Field from the NHC Official Forecast”James Franklin (NHC): “HFIP Performance Measure For Rapid Intensification”Mu-Chieh (Laura) Ko (HRD): “A Review of Support Vector Machine …

AOML Flies Science Missions into Succession of Atlantic Storms

“Many of the storms we flew in 2019 were ‘living on the edge,’ in that they were weak, vertically sheared, but also unpredictable. In previous years, we saw these storms intensify, such as Hurricane Michael in 2018. This season, many struggled to intensify. As we continue to build a dataset of these sheared storms, we …

Paper on the role of turbulence in the eyewall and rainband for tropical cyclone intensification published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

You can access the paper at https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/19/14289/2019/

Braving the Eye of the Storm: Research from drone penetration of hurricane eyewall published

Braving the Eye of the Storm Research from drone penetration of hurricane eyewall published The most dangerous part of the hurricane is the eye-wall close to the ocean. It’s where the storm draws energy from heat in the water, which influences how strong – and how quickly – the storm will develop. It’s also where …

New paper on hurricane research with drones highlighted in UCAR/NCAR news

A new paper by a team of scientists, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), demonstrates that observations just above the surface of the ocean near the eyewall of the storm can improve the performance of hurricane models used by forecasters. Scientists in 2017 and 2018 …

Paper on different energy pathways in hurricanes during rapid intensification released online in The Journal of the Atmospheric Science

You can read the study at https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JAS-D-19-0067.1

Paper on how tropical cyclones in shear intensify published in Geophysical Research Letters

Summary: Tropical cyclones (TCs) are made up of thunderstorms (what we call convection), and these storms have strong winds moving up and down (what we call up- and downdrafts). Dry air enhances evaporative cooling (the same process that cools people when they sweat) from convective downdrafts, reducing the temperature and humidity in low levels; this …