Paper on an update turbulent mixing in hurricane forecast models published in Frontiers in Earth Science
Vertical turbulent mixing in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) has a significant impact on numerical forecasts of tropical cyclone structure and intensity. This study modified the PBL parameterization scheme in the Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) model to include the effects of roll vortices on turbulent fluxes with information based on previous work with […]
NOAA Measures Hurricane Tammy from Satellites through the Sea
NOAA conducted the first ever collocated drone mission into a hurricane recently, collecting vital data in the lower levels of the storm that have been historically too hard to reach – until now. Check out the story at https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/noaa-altius-saildrone-mission-into-tammy/.
Study of the impact on how urban areas are represented in computer forecast models published in Geophysical Research Letters
Urban flooding during tropical cyclone landfall can lead to major impacts, and understanding and forecasting it is an important and emerging research area. Two recent Atlantic hurricanes, Florence in 2018 and Harvey in 2017, are forecast using a state-of-the-art computer model with two different ways to include urban areas. The model can predict rainfall more […]
Study on the relationship between vortex tilt and intensification published in Monthly Weather Review
In many tropical cyclones, the center of circulation in the lower and middle levels of the atmosphere are not in the same location, what we call tilt. Using a recently developed database of wind analyses from Doppler radars on Hurricane Hunter aircraft, this study shows that the distance between the circulation centers can be a […]
Review paper on the impact of vertical wind shear on tropical cyclones released online in The Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
Vertical wind shear, which is typically defined as the difference in the speed and direction of wind in the bottom and top of the tropical cyclone, significantly impacts the structures and intensities of tropical cyclones. This review paper summarizes the findings of previous studies that have looked at the interactions between tropical cyclones and wind […]
NOAA Deploys New Black Swift Drone into Hurricane Tammy
NOAA hurricane researchers successfully deployed a new uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) into Tammy to measure parts of the storm too dangerous for humans to go. The Black Swift Technologies S0™ UAS was launched from the NOAA WP-3D Orion Hurricane Hunter aircraft by scientists from NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory during missions into the storm as it strengthened and […]
Paper on changes to the low-level wind field in Hurricane Ida at landfall published in Geophysical Research Letters
Wind structure in the hurricane boundary layer shows pronounced asymmetries over water and at landfall. Aircraft observations have noted significant changes in the nature of these asymmetries prior to and during Hurricane Ida’s landfall. Such changes can have important implications for damage patterns during TC landfall, and understanding the physical processes underlying these changes can […]
Study on the calibration of high wind-speed measurements from GPS satellites published in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
This study used a tropical cyclone (TC) wind model to develop, test, and improve estimates of high wind speeds utilizing signal reflections from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The paper can be found at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10180079. For more information, contact aoml.communications@noaa.gov.
Study showing how the distribution of convection near the center of hurricanes is related to wind shear and intensity change published in Monthly Weather Review
This research investigates how the distribution of different types of precipitation are related to tropical cyclone (TC) intensity change. Even though deep convection – the tallest clouds – is the least frequent type of precipitation in TCs, the amount of deep convection, especially when it is evenly distributed around the TC center, has the strongestrelationship […]
