Tropical cyclone intensity change remains a difficult process to understand. Even beyond the context of real-time forecasting and with the benefit of a more comprehensive analysis, it is still sometimes impossible to explain why, in apparently similar situations, one tropical storm or hurricane will weaken while another will become stronger. Our inability to understand (let alone forecast) these events remains as a potential danger to coastal communities which are vulnerable to the possibility of a rapidly intensifying hurricane making landfall.
Intellectual merit: In general, increasing values of environmental wind shear are increasingly less favorable for tropical cyclone intensification. However, cases with unexpected (and unforecasted) intensification are often associated with moderate values of wind shear. The goal of this research is to better understand the relationships between wind shear, tropical cyclone structure, and tropical cyclone intensification, with an emphasis on cases of moderate wind shear. This will be achieved through a synthesis of observational data sets obtained in past and recent field programs as well as analyses of high-resolution numerical model simulations. In particular, a recently developed modeling technique allows for the production of idealized simulations with highly controlled environments that can be specified to be nearly identical to the environments around observed tropical cyclones. These simulations will be further validated against observations from within the cyclones. Once satisfactory agreement between the observed and simulated storms is achieved, the simulations can be used to understand the physical processes that caused intensity and structure change for those cases. Furthermore, the idealized modeling technique allows all aspects of the surrounding environment - the wind, temperature, and humidity profiles, to be varied independently. Thus it will be possible, on a case-by-case basis, to isolate which of these factors have the most control over intensification (or decay) of the storm. This will lead to a new understanding of how the environment surrounding a tropical cyclone modulates its structure and intensity, and to what extent intensity changes are either internally or externally driven.
Broader impacts: This project will lead to improvement of our understanding of environmental controls of tropical cyclone intensity and structure change. Greater understanding will lead to improved forecasting, not only through improved model development, but also through the identification of new or improved forecasting parameters based on the environmental soundings. The project will put to use existing datasets as well as lead to the generation and dissemination of new data sets derived from the raw observations obtained from recent field projects. The project will support the education and training of two graduate students.
