Paper summarizing recent advances in intensity change research released online in Tropical Cyclone Research and Review

This paper summarizes recent research on a variety of topics related to tropical cyclone (TC) intensity change. These include processes occurring where the air and the sea meet and within the lowest 3000 ft of the atmosphere, small-scale processes within clouds, and how heat from the sun and the earth's surface (radiation) interacts with TCs. …

HRD scientists participate in 25th AVAPS Users Group Meeting

Worldwide users of Airborne Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS) gathered this past week in Boulder, Colorado, for their 25th annual group meeting. AVAPS is the over-arching system for dropwindsonde and other profiling systems used by numerous agencies around the world. Users meet to exchange important updates and improvements to AVAPS, share ideas and best practices, …

Recap of 2022 Hurricane Field Program

Hurricane Field Program leadership held two sessions made up of a series of short science talks to wrap up the 2022 hurricane season. Talks included preliminary science results, challenges and successes in sampling and analysis strategies, modeling results, etc. The 2022 season saw 68 missions flown by NOAA aircraft into eight different tropical system. NOAA …

HRD scientists participate in American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting

The American Geophysical Union held their annual Fall Meeting 12-16 December in Chicago, and also online. Every year, the Fall Meeting unites >25,000 attendees from 100+ countries in the Earth and space sciences community to discuss findings, connect scientists from around the world, advance the profession and connect over passion for the impact of science. …

Study on estimating rain rate in hurricanes published in Geophysical Research Letters

The study significantly reduced the estimated errors and uncertainties of the rain rate by combining observed raindrop size and radar reflectivity using machine learning. Flooding from rainfall is one of the most damaging and deadly hazards associated with tropical cyclones, so estimating rainfall amounts is important to keep people and property safe.  Forecasters use weather …

Review of aircraft missions into Hurricane Earl

NOAA conducted 20 aircraft missions into Hurricane Earl in late August and early September. The series of flights over 12 days was the longest series of flights into one system that NOAA has conducted. We recently reviewed these flights, and the slides from the review can be found here. Flight tracks of all the NOAA …

NOAA Hurricane Field Program begins with flights into Potential Tropical Cyclone 2 in the Tropical Atlantic

The NOAA flight season began early this year with an operational flight into a system, known as Potential Tropical Cyclone 2, that may soon develop into a tropical depression east of the Windward Islands. The plan for the season was recently released and is available online at https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/2022-hurricane-field-program/, and a kickoff meeting to discuss plans …

HRD Seminar – Dr. Hua Leighton (CIMAS/HRD) – 24 March 2022

Dr. Leighton presented a seminar titled “Characterizing Raindrop Size Distributions Observed in Hurricanes”. ABSTRACT: One of the main applications of radar measurements is to estimate rainfall rate based on its power-law relationships with radar reflectivity. Different relationships have been obtained for different weather scenarios. Hurricanes, in comparison with other severe weather systems, have a much longer …

HRD Monthly Science Meeting of August 2021

August's science meeting consisted of two presentations: Stanley Goldenberg - "NOAA’s August Update of the 2021 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook: Methodology & Forecast"  Tomislava Vukicevic - "Sensitivity of microphysics parameterization to stochastically perturbed parameters" Copies of the two presentations are available on the anonymous ftp site at: ftp://ftp.aoml.noaa.gov/pub/hrd/blog/meetings/2021/Science/HRD_SciMeet_20210812.zip

Paper that reviews what we know about intensity change published in Atmosphere

This paper is an overview of what we currently know about processes important in tropical cyclone intensity change and the research that has been done during the past 15 years using aircraft data. The paper describes the eye and eyewall and how they change in time, the region close to the ocean surface where the …