Professionals, Mentor, and Documentation

I chose a number of field professionals to interact with – approximately twenty – from professors at universities involved with hurricane research as well as from hurricane researchers at the Hurricane Research Division (HRD) and forecasters working for the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Since twenty is a lot of people to give even brief descriptions about, here is a little bit about each of the professional who responded to me.

Professor Evans, a professor of tropical Penn State University, who teaches and researches tropical meteorology

Kerry Emanuel, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mark Bourassa, professor of meteorology at Florida State University

Phil Klotzbach, a professor of meteorology at Colorado State University, co-head of a team that makes the second most famous yearly hurricane forecast

Howie Friedman, the deputy director of the HRD

Mark Powell, researcher of tropical meteorology at the HRD

Sim D. Aberson, a researcher of tropical meteorology at the HRD

Sylvie Lorsolo, a researcher of tropical meteorology at the HRD

James Franklin, the current branch chief of NHC

Stacy Stewart, senior hurricane specialist at the NHC.

I chose all of these people for some hopefully obvious reasons – they are all involved in some form of meteorology, either through forecasting or research. They are either professors at major universities, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center, or paid researchers at the Hurricane Research Division in Miami, FL.

For documentation, I kept a journal of my thoughts and ideas, as I thought this was the best method of recording not only all of my thoughts, but an evolution of my ideas as I gained more knowledge and insight throughout the year. Looking back, I’m able to see where I went wrong (and right), so when I do other research projects later in life, I will have a much better idea of how to formulate my initial plans and ideas.

Finally, I chose my mentor, Jason Dunion, because of his connection to the Hurricane Research Division as well as his willingness and eagerness to help me along with this project. Without him, I doubt what I accomplished would have been possible.

First Semester Bibliography

American Meteorological Society . (n.d.). AMS Glossary . Retrieved January 1, 2010, from http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/search?id=warm-low1

Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology . (n.d.). BoM - Tropical Cyclone Frequently Asked Questions . Retrieved January 1, 2010, from http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/wa/cyclone/about/faq/faq_def_6.shtml

Barber, B. (2009). Sandbox for Mapping, Viewing, and Analyzing Atlantic Hurricane Data . Retrieved October 14, 2009, from http://db.hellohelp.net/hurdat_storms/storm_search.php

Booth, M. A., T. Lambert, J. Blackerby, and R. L. Elsberry, 2006: Accuracy of tropical cyclone intensity forecasts in the North Pacific and Atlantic. AMS 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology. 24-28 April, Monterey, CA. [available online at http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/108805.pdf]

Bosart, L. F., Velden, C. S., Bracken, W. E., Molinari, J., & Black, P. G. (2000). Environmental Influences on the Rapid Intensification of Hurricane Opal (1995). Monthly Weather Review , 322-352.

Center, N.H. (2005, January 5). Tropical Cyclone Report – Hurricane Charley. Retrieved January 1, 2010, from http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL032004_Charley.pdf

Center, N. H. (2009, January 22). Tropical Cyclone Report - Hurricane Gustav. Retrieved January 1, 2010, from http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL072008_Gustav.pdf

DeMaria, M. (2004, January 29). Description of the Extended Best Track File. Retrieved January 1, 2010, from ftp://rammftp.cira.colostate.edu/demaria/ebtrk/readme16.txt

DeMaria, M., J.A Knaff, and C. Sampson, 2007: Evaluation of long-term trends in tropical cyclone intensity forecasts. Meteorol. Atmos. Phys., 97, 19-28.

DeMaria, M., & Kaplan, J. (1994). Sea Surface Temperature and the Maximum Intensity of Atlantic Tropical Cyclones . Journal of Climate , 1324-1334

Elsberry, R. T.D.B Lambert, and M. A. Boothe, 2007: Accuracy of Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific tropical cyclone intensity forecast guidance, Wea. Forecasting, 22, 747-762.

Emanuel, K. A. (1999). Thermodynamic Control of Hurricane Intensity. Nature , 665-669.

Erb, M.P. (2006). A Case Study of Hurricane Katrina: Rapid Intensification in the Gulf of Mexico. Preprints,20th National Conference on Undergraduate Research, Asheville NC.

Frank, W. M., and E. A. Ritchie, 2001: Effects of vertical wind shear on the intensity and structure of numerically simulated hurricanes. Mon. Wea. Rev., 129, 2249-2269.

Gibbs, W. (1955). 200mb Divergence Associated with Rapid and Intense Cyclogenesis. Central Meteorological Bureau, Melborne , 1-18.

Jarvinen, B.R., C.J. Neumann, and M.A.S. Davis, 1984: A tropical cyclone data tape for the North Atlantic basin, 1886-1983: Contents, limitations, and uses. NOAA Tech. Memo. NWS. NHC 22, Miami, FL, 21 pp. [Available from National Technical Information Service, U.S. Department of Commerce, 5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield, VA 22151.]

Kaplan, J. (Performer). (2008). A revised rapid intensification index for the Atlantic and E. Pacific basins. Orlando, FL, USA.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/28Hurricanes/wrfredirect.cgi?id=9472

Kaplan, J., & DeMaria, M. (2003). Large-Scale Characteristics of Rapidly Intensifying Tropical Cyclones in the North Atlantic Basin. Weather and Forecasting , 1093–1108.

Kaplan, J., & DeMaria, M. (2006). Estimating the Likelihood of Rapid Intensification in the Atlantic and E. Pacific Basins using SHIPS Model Data. AMS Conference , 1-4.

Kossin, J. and W. H. Schubert, 2001: Mesovortices, polygonal flow patterns, and rapid pressure falls in hurricane-like vortices. J. Atmos. Sci., 58, 1079-1090.

Landsea, C. (n.d.). HRD: FAQs. Retrieved January 1, 2010, from http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html

Merrill, R. T. (1988). Enviromental Influences on Hurricane Intensification. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences , 1678-1687.

Molinari, and, D. Vallaro, 1990: External influences on hurricane intensity. Part II:
Vertical structure and response of the hurricane vortex. J. Atmos. Sci., 47, 1902-1918.

National Hurricane Center . (2009 ). NHC Archives of Hurricane Seasons . Retrieved October 14, 2009, from http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastall.shtml

National Hurricane Center. (2009, January 1 ). Extended Best Track File . Retrieved January 1, 2010, from ftp://rammftp.cira.colostate.edu/demaria/ebtrk/ebtrk_atlc.txt

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (n.d.). 48 Hour Track Errors - "Early" Guidance . Retrieved January 1, 2010, from http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/verification/figs/Early_model_ATL_trk_error_trend.gif

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2008 ). Easy to Read HURDAT 2008 . Retrieved October 15, 2009, from http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/easyread-2008.html

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration . (2009). Daily Climate Composits. Retrieved October 12, 2009, from http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/composites/day/

Schade, L. R., & Emanuel, K. A. (1999). The Ocean’s Effect on the Intensity of Tropical Cyclones. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences , 642-651.

Scotti, R. A. (2003). Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938. Little, Brown.

University of Illinois . (n.d.). History of GOES . Retrieved January 15, 2010, from GOES-1 through GOES-7: http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/%28Gl%29/guides/rs/sat/goes/oldg.rxml

Culminating Theory

My culminating theory for this semester is that the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index can and should be updated to include storm size as a measure. For this, I created a revised index, aptly named RACE (Revised Accumulated Cyclone Energy - inventive, no?). My evidence is within the following formula described further on this journal entry - the integral of (10^-4)*2pi*r*[(velocity of outer wind radius) x (outer radius – r)/(outer radius – inner radius) x (velocity of inner wind radius – velocity of outer wind radius)]^2 from outer radius to inner radius.

Why did I pick a formula to represent the culmination of my field work? Because a formula is incredibly short and sweet, but able to say so much. Also, when choosing to revise an index that is based on a certain formula, I would have to change the original formula to a new formula. Any other method of representing a revised ACE index would be complex or unwieldy. A formula is the perfect way of showing a culmination of my field work, by revealing the changes I believe need to occur in the ACE index.

Second Semester Bibliography

A list of new (or heavily used) sources from the second semester

Emanuel, K. A. (1989). The Finite Amplitude Nature of Tropical Cyclogenesis. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 3431-3456.

Emanuel, K. A. (2005). Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones over the Past 30 Years. Nature, 686-688.

Evans, personal communication, April 7, 2010

H. Friedman, personal communication, April 14, 2010

J. Franklin, personal communication, April 7, 2010

K. Emanuel, personal communication, April 5, 2010

M. Bourassa, personal communication, April 6, 2010

M. Powell, personal communication, April 12, 2010

P. Klotzbach, personal communication, April 6, 2010

Powell, Mark D., Reinhold, Timothy A. (2007). Tropical Cyclone Destructive Potential by Integrated Kinetic Energy. Bulletin of the Atmospheric Sciences, 1-14.

S. D. Aberson, personal communication, April 7, 2010

S. Lorsolo, personal communication, April 7, 2010

S. Stewart, personal communication, April 7, 2010

Semester 1 - Guiding Questions

Main:
How do certain factors affect the ability for tropical systems to rapidly intensify, and does storm size, determined by the radius of hurricane and tropical storm force winds, have an effect on the potential tropical systems to rapidly intensify?


Secondary:
How do Hurricanes strengthen/function?

Why is hurricane intensity forecasting so difficult?

What are the atmospheric factors that influence hurricane intensity?

What are the oceanic factors that influence hurricane intensity?

What are the hurricane features that influence hurricane intensity?

Does storm size influence hurricane intensity?

Journal #15 - The Final Countdown: A Reflection

Huzzah! The process, the semester, all my work has been completed and is over. It’s a feeling of both relief and accomplishment, after an entire year of research, I feel like I’ve both thoroughly investigated a topic (hurricane intensity forecasting) and I have added something to the field. Reflecting back on this process, would I do anything differently? Perhaps I would tell prior me to do a more constant, steady stream of work as opposed to working in bursts over a semester. Is there anything I wish I had done more of? I wish I had contacted more experts in my first semester – I feel like just talking to people in the field would have been helpful in formulating my ideas. Yes, I had a great mentor, but I feel like talking to experts later in the year gave me a broad view of my subject. I really appreciate a lot of the comments I received on my paper from meteorologists – they were all incredibly supportive of my interest in meteorology. I also feel that this entire year gave me a year to really pursue my own interests, and do them independently. The course was rigorous because it was forced to be – I had to do all my own research, find all my articles, on my own time. Making my own schedule was a real independent experience for me. I feel I gained a lot of personal responsibility from this, completely outside of my new knowledge of hurricanes. What a great year.

Journal #14 - Hello? Is there anybody out there?

Here’s one of the biggest drawbacks about meteorology – there simply aren’t a lot of meteorologists. Only a few hundred students graduate with meteorology degrees each year, and even then, not all of these graduates go on to actually go into meteorology. Not to mention that the meteorologists that do work in weather forecasting tend to live in and around cities and universities (to either reach the greatest number or people or do research). Unfortunately, here in southwest Connecticut, we lack large cities (500,000+) and universities that study and do research in the atmospheric sciences and meteorology. This made for some great difficulties in finding a local expert to sit on my panel and evaluate my presentation. No school parents had any real involvement in meteorology, and the alumni office seemed to be lost to find anyone who was in meteorology. Even when I asked the science teachers, their contacts had no desire to participate on the panel – they were either too busy or didn’t feel like wasting their time. There are no meteorology universities near our area – the closest are Cornell (4 hours), MIT (3 hours), or Penn State (5 hours), and I doubt a researcher would be willing to drive all the way to see my small presentation. Most broadcast meteorologists are working or live in New York City – and are most likely too busy to participate on a panel. And the closest office for the National Weather Service is located in Upton, New York – a significant distance away, and most of the people working for the NWS would be working when my presentation is scheduled to be. Where does this leave me? Hopefully I’ll get lucky. Hopefully one person will be able to spend some time for my presentation.

Journal #13 – Exit Visa (get me out of this place)

Where things stand in my field work: done. I’ve developed a new formula for determining hurricane energy, which was my main goal of what I set out to do. The only possible thing I could do left for my field work would to be analyzing some test cases of storms – plugging in data and getting out a value. Articulating an original theory: done. As previously stated, my original formula for estimated the kinetic wind energy contained within a hurricane is a combination of prior knowledge gained in this area as well as contact with meteorologists.

Five key findings (in chronological order):
1) Yes, there is a general consensus among meteorologists that a new index for hurricane energy is needed, outside of Safir-Simpson or ACE

2) Because there was a general consensus for a new scale is needed, storm size was seen as an important factor to include in this new index (which fits into my research in the prior semester)

3) Taking storm size into account, I would have to figure out a way to find the energy of the wind across all points of the storm system; to do this, I would have to assume the hurricane is a perfect circle (rarely true) and that at a certain radius away from the center of the storm, the wind is the same speed (also rarely true).

4) How to find the total kinetic energy of a tropical cyclone, assuming linearly decreasing wind speed (the development of a formula).

5) Meteorology and forecasting is not perfect and will most likely never be perfect – we have to make assumptions and do the best we can to understand the natural world.

Theory: Because there is a need for a new hurricane energy index, I developed one taking into account storm size and wind speed at certain radii outside of the center, finding the total wind kinetic energy of a tropical cyclone.

Conclusion: I have finished all I have to do – maybe do a singular case study for my portfolio or presentation, but all of the important work is done. I’m very proud of my research and development.

Journal #12 – Possible uses of RACE

Now that I’ve developed an update to ACE, I’d like to mull over some of the possibilities for this formula. First and foremost, RACE will be used to calculate the accumulated cyclone energy for both storms and hurricane seasons, as ACE does in its current capacity. RACE would simply be a much more accurate measurement of the accumulated cyclone energy. However, the potential for RACE extends beyond a simple recalculation of what ACE was used for – RACE can be expanded to new areas of hurricane energy. One possible usage of RACE would be as a sort of corollary to the Safir-Simpson Scale – certain values of RACE would correlate to different categories of storm intensity. However, this scale would not be ranking storms merely on their maximum potential damage (as done by Safir-Simpson currently). Storms would be ranked on their overall damage potential – how much damage a cyclone could do over a wide enough area. Generally speaking, a larger cyclone will cause more damage than an equally strong small cyclone – there is larger area of ocean that is affected by the water, which leads to a greater storm surge; the increase wind field means that damage is caused over a larger land area; the larger storm size means more total water content and can lead to more flooding. In this way, RACE would be a helpful tool in determining the overall destructive power of a storm, which would be helpful in allocating resources or emergency services to affected areas, prior to a storm.

Journal #11 – Formula, part 2

Why is this formula an improvement over ACE and IKE? I believe that it gives a more accurate representation of overall hurricane intensity versus ACE. ACE is simply a measurement of the square of the maximum wind speed of a hurricane, no matter how large or how small a storm system is. It does not give an accurate reading of the overall energy of the storm – a storm with maximum winds of 100kts and a 34kt radius of 200 miles still has the same ACE as a storm with maximum winds of 100kts and a 34kt radius of 60 miles. It’s simply more accurate than ACE is when determining energy for a storm during its lifetime, or during a hurricane season. Now, while IKE is a more accurate measure of storm intensity (see http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/ike/Files/IntegratedEnergyPowell2.pdf for more information on IKE), it is significantly more difficult to calculate. My formula only requires four data points – 34kt wind radius, 50kt wind radius, 64kt wind radius, and maximum velocity, while IKE requires significantly more data points and would be significantly more difficult to calculate. My formula provides both an accurate representation of overall hurricane energy by taking into account storm size, yet allows for a method that is still simple enough to be easily usable. From now on, I wish to refer to my formula as RACE – revised accumulated cyclone energy. I believe that RACE deals with overall hurricane energy in a way that is both accurate and simple, making it an upgrade of the AC E formula.

Journal #10 – Operational vs. Research

Backtracking a little bit, I thought I’d write an entry on the differing opinions between meteorologists in the operational and research fields. In a few of my previous entries, I touched on the differences in opinions between meteorologists who are primarily involved in research versus those who are operational (the people who actually make predictions). In general, operational meteorologists are more interested in data having to do with actual storm forecasting and effects on people, while research meteorologists are more concerned with data quantifying types of weather. However, this generally only appears to be true with regards to tropical weather. In winter weather forecasting, there are nearly no ‘indexes’ – the only index for winter weather is the NESIS scale (NorthEast Snowfall Impact Scale), which quantifies snowstorms based on how many people affected by large amounts of snow. Not surprisingly, this scale was, created by a pair of operational meteorologists – Kocin and Uccellini – as it is not concerned with the overall extremity of a storm, but rather with its effect on the populace. In severe weather forecasting, the Fujita scale (for tornado intensity), which is based on the damage a tornado causes, was created by an operational meteorologist and a research meteorologist. In general, then, operational meteorologists use tools that connect the severity of weather events with regards to the populace these events effect. Research meteorologists (with such scales as ACE in tropical forecasting) who do not connect with people are no so concerned about weather’s effect on the populace.

Journal #9 - The Formula

Taking in to consideration all the responses I have received, I set out to create a formula for a hurricane energy index somewhere between ACE and IKE. Using four common data points of a tropical system (34kt wind radius, 50kt wind radius, 64kt wind radius, and maximum wind speed), I’ve developed a formula that takes into account both wind speed and storm size. One of the assumptions made in the creation of the formula was that winds increase in a linear fashion between wind radii – although this could be seen as simplistic, it is still accurate. The general form of the formula is as follows – the integral of (10^-4)*2pi*r*[(velocity of outer wind radius) x (outer radius – r)/(outer radius – inner radius) x (velocity of inner wind radius – velocity of outer wind radius)]^2 from outer radius to inner radius. In the formula, little r is the variable. The first part of the formula – the integral of 2pi*r – is the formula to find the area of a circle between any two radii. The second part of the formula (or, everything else) is the formula for determining the wind speed at any radius of the tropical cyclone. The wind speed is squared, as the formula for kinetic energy is ½ mv^2. In this formula mass and the coefficient ½ were not included because we are not interested in the actual kinetic energy of the cyclone – merely the amount of kinetic energy in the cyclone compared with other cyclones. Using this formula, you can find the entire kinetic energy of a cyclone based not only on the maximum wind speed, but also how far out the storm extends.