NASA Data Combined To Improve Hurricane Landfall Forecasts

[phantom power]

Data gathered from last year's NASA hurricane research mission and a NASA satellite have improved tropical storm landfall and storm strength forecasts in computer models.

Ocean surface wind data gathered from NASA's QuikSCAT satellite were combined with data from aircraft sensors dropped into tropical storms and fed into a new generation weather research and forecasting (WRF) computer model used to predict weather. The researchers in this study also used data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) GOES-11 satellite rapid-scan cloud track wind data. When the data were added, the resulting prediction showed improved track and intensity forecast of tropical storms.

"Our results indicate the quite positive impact of those data on forecasts of two landfall storms in last season: tropical storms Cindy and Gert." said Zhaoxia Pu, scientist at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and lead researcher on the study. She reported the results on April 24 at the American Meteorological Society’s Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology in Monterey, Calif. The detailed results of this study have been submitted to the Monthly Weather Review for publication.

"By incorporating the aircraft sensor and QuiKSCAT data, the new generation WRF computer model was able to reproduce structure of the rainfalls that caused the flooding during the landfall of two storms," Pu said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060424181112.htm