make summary for each lucture

CES 4580, Hurricane Engineering and Global Sustainability MODULE 2 -- HURRICANE FORECASTING AND ADVISORY (REF: ‘HURRICANE ALMANAC’ BY BRYAN NORCROSS, ‘DIVINE WIND’ BY KERRY EMANUEL)

1

HURRICANE 101

(NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VIDEO)

Recap of Module 1

2

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/101-videos/hurricanes-101?source=relatedvideo

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1819 – After the Great September Gale of 1815 Professor John Farrar of Harvard University theorized that the storm “appears to have been a moving vortex and not rushing forward of a great body of the atmosphere.” In a paper he suggested that storms have rotation. 1831 – William C. Redfield publishes an article in the American Journal of Science and Arts stating that the New England Hurricane of 1821 was a “great whirlwind.” While traveling around Connecticut, he documented that during the storm trees fell with different orientations. This suggested that the winds rotated around a center. (continued).

3

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1831 – William C. Redfield’s article also proposes the idea of “steering currents.” He speculates that storms move as a component portion of the general mass of atmosphere which has previously been tending in that direction. His article was the first one to provide a view of the surface structure and the movement of hurricanes. 1847 – Lieutenant Colonel William Reid establishes the first system for displaying warning signals when the approach of a storm is indicated by the barometer (showing low pressure).

4

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1873 – Army Signal Corps (delegated with responsibility by Congress to organize a national meteorological service in the US) generates the first set of weather reports for Caribbean islands. 1874 – The first printed weather map, is generated by the Signal Corps, that shows a hurricane (offshore between Jacksonville and Savannah). 1875 – First known official hurricane warning is issued two days before a hurricane devastates the southern Cuban coast.

5

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1909 – Weather balloons are used to get some upper-air data. 1937 – Upper atmosphere data are gathered using instrument packages – called radiosondes – aloft in balloons. For the first time, forecasters are able to analyze steering currents. 1943 – A primary hurricane forecast office is established in Miami.

6

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1943 – Colonel Joseph Duckworth, a pilot who taught classes on how to fly into bad weather in the Army Air Force, becomes the first person to fly a plane into a hurricane’s eye. He flew twice into a hurricane near Houston in a single engine AT-6 Texan training plane. 1944 – Regular flights into storms begin because of losses being taken by the American fleet from bad weather. Mid-1940s – Radar is used to track weather systems for the first time. [Radars send radio waves that are reflected back from airplanes and ships. During WWII scientists learned that raindrops, snowflakes, hail, sleet, and cloud drops reflect radio waves, which interfered with spotting enemy airplanes and ships – thus they realized that radar can help detect dangerous weather such as thunderstorms, hurricanes, typhoons.]

7

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1955 – A new radar at Cape Hatteras captures all three east coast hurricanes that year. Congress appropriates money for a national hurricane research project and the deployment of coastal radar system – by 1960, radars along the coast are operational. Late 1950s – Early computer-forecast models are run. April 1, 1960 – The first American weather satellite, Trios I, proved the value of satellite coverage of the weather. It had a television camera and provided first live view of the earth from space.

8

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1963 – Project Storm Fury is undertaken to try to weaken hurricanes by “seeding” them with silver iodide. Ten aircrafts are sent into Hurricane Beulah north of Puerto Rico. The proposed modification technique involved artificial stimulation of convection outside the eyewall through seeding with silver iodide. The invigorated convection, it was argued, would compete with the original eyewall, lead to reformation of the eyewall at larger radius, and thus, through partial conservation of angular momentum, produce a decrease in the strongest winds.

9

Milestones in Hurricane Science Storm Fury project was finally closed down in 1983 because observations in unmodified hurricanes indicated: (1) That cloud seeding had little prospect of success because hurricanes contained too much natural ice and too little supercooled water. (2) That the positive results inferred from the seeding experiments in the 1960s stemmed from inability to discriminate between the expected results of human intervention and the natural behavior of hurricanes. Reference: Willoughby, H. E., D. P. Jorgensen, R. A. Black, and S. L. Rosenthal, 1985: Project STORMFURY, A Scientific Chronicle, 1962-1983, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 66, 505-514.

10

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1965 – Five statistical models, developed in conjunction with National Hurricane Research project, are in regular use for hurricane forecasting. 1966 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) - launches the ESSA-1 and ESSA-2 weather satellites. Continuous images were not available, but each location on earth can be photographed each day – “no longer could a storm surprise forecasters and show up at the coast unannounced.” [Note: In 1900, forecasters never issued a hurricane warning for Great Galveston Hurricane – America’s deadliest hurricane with official death toll of 8,000.]

11

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1970 – The Weather Bureau becomes the National Weather Service (a part of the new agency named the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- NOAA). 1975 – NASA launches Geostationary Operational Satellite (GOES-1) – the first weather satellite to be parked over a fixed spot on earth. Continuous satellite coverage becomes available to forecasters for the first time. 1976 – First P-3 aircraft is acquired by NOAA for research and reconnaissance.

12

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1977 – Second P-3 aircraft is acquired by NOAA and a direct satellite link is operational between reconnaissance aircraft and NHC – “Forecasters can know what is going inside a storm in real time.” Early 1990s – NEXRAD (next generation Doppler radars), with longer range and higher resolution, is deployed by the National Weather Service (NWS). These radars can measure wind speeds when storms are within about 75 miles of the coast. 1992 – Computer generated forecast tracks improve as Princeton’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab (GFDL) develops an advanced hurricane computer model.

13

Milestones in Hurricane Science 1994 – More frequent and higher resolution images of tropical cyclones become available as the next generation of GOES satellites is operational. 1997 – To measure various hurricane parameters “GPS dropsondes or dropwindsondes” are used for the first time. High-flying NOAA jet drops these high-tech instrument packages from flight level down to the ocean surface to get precise readings of temperature, humidity, pressure, etc. Wind speed in the storm can be also estimated.

14