Science MissionDirectorate

NASA Contribution to Hurricane Research

Ramesh KakarWeather Focus Area LeaderTRMM, Aqua and GPM Program ScientistMarch 1, 2010

March 4, 2008 Interdepartmental Hurricane Conference, Charleston, SC

NASA Hurricane Research Focus Areas

Satellite remote sensing

Field campaigns Numerical modeling

Sensor development

Aqua

Terra

Aura

GRACE

ICESat CALIPSO

CloudSat

SORCE TRMM

EO-1

Landsat-7

ACRIMSAT

QuikSCAT Jason

OSTM/Jason 220092009

Aqua

Terra

Aura

Landsat-7

ACRIMSAT

Jason

OSTM/Jason 220102010

Glory

SORCE TRMM

Aquarius

GRACECALIPSO

CloudSat

EO-1

NASA Operating Missions

Mission Program Sci Launch Phase Extension to Dec Jan Feb Comments

TRMM R. Kakar 11/27/1997 Extended 9/30/2011 Participates in Hurricane Related Research

QuikSCAT E. Lindstrom 6/19/1999 Extended 9/30/2011 Participated in Hurricane Related Research

Terra G. Gutman 12/18/1999 Extended 9/30/2011 Participates in Hurricane Related Research

ACRIMSat R. Kakar 12/20/1999 Extended 9/30/2011

NMP EO-1 G. Gutman 11/21/2000 Extended 9/30/2011

Jason E. Lindstrom 12/7/2001 Extended 9/30/2011 Participates in Hurricane Related Research

GRACE J. Labrecque 3/17/2002 Extended 9/30/2011

Aqua R. Kakar 5/3/2002 Extended 9/30/2011 Participates in Hurricane Related Research

ICESat T. Wagner 1/12/2003 Extended 9/30/2010

SORCE R. Kakar 1/25/2003 Extended 9/30/2011

Aura E. Hilsenrath 7/15/2004 Prime thru 9/10 9/30/2011

Cloudsat D. Considine 4/28/2006 Extended 9/30/2011 Participates in Hurricane Related Research

CALIPSO D. Considine 4/28/2006 Extended 9/30/2011 Participates in Hurricane Related Research

OSTM E. Lindstrom 6/20/2008 Prime thru 6/11 Ends 6/30/11 Participates in Hurricane Related Research

On plan, adequate margin, no significant issues.

Problems, working to resolve within planned margin

Problems, not enough margin to recover

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ESD Missions in Development & Formulation

GLORYLate 2010

NPPSep 2011

AQUARIUSLate 2010

LDCMDec 2012

SMAPNov 2014

GPMJul 2013Nov 2014

ICESat-2Late 2015

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TRMM Precipitation Radar View of Hurricane KatrinaTRMM Precipitation Radar View of Hurricane Katrina

Vertical rain structure as revealed by the TRMM Precipitation Radar in near-real time

TRMM is the only satellite that can provide rain structure information over open oceans, the breeding and intensification grounds of most tropical cyclones

Energy-releasing deep convective clouds (to 16 km) in the eyewall of Katrina on August 28 occurred while the storm was intensifying to Cat 5; TRMM data have established this association in many storms

Deep eyewall towerDeep eyewall tower

EyeEye

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• Improve analysis and prediction of storms at sea, which has benefited both maritime safety and economy through NASA-NOAA collaboration.

Impact of QuikSCAT surface wind data

Impact on surface pressure analysisImpact on surface pressure analysisW

ith

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AT

dat

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Con

trol

Impact on Hurricane Cindy forecastImpact on Hurricane Cindy forecast

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Packing Heat in the Gulf

Altimetry combined with SST data and a two-layer model is used to calculate Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential (TCHP)TCHP is a measure of the oceanic heat content from the sea surface to the 26°C isotherm Both hurricanes rapidly intensified to category 5 as they passed over the Loop Current and a warm ring, then diminished to category 4 and category 3, respectively, by the time they traveled over cooler waters High values of TCHP may be linked to hurricane intensification. (17 % improvement in the 96 hour forecast of Hurricane Ivan )

13.2  66.5 102.8 301.1 Cntrl

11.4 60.4 89.0 252.0 Cntrl + MODIS

74 64 52 34 Cases (#)

00-h 24-h 48-h 120-h Time

Average hurricane track errors (nm)

48.9   44.8 39.6 29.4 Cntrl

51.1 55.2 60.4 70.6 Cntrl + MODIS

74 64 52 34 Cases (#)

00-h 24-h 48-h 120-h Time

Frequency of superior hurricane performance

Percent of cases where the specified run had a more accurate hurricane position than the other run. Note: These cases are for hurricanes in the subtropics during 2004.

The Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation found that MODIS winds also impact hurricane track forecasts.

Impact in Tropics: GFS Model

In both tables, the forecast time is the bottom row. The control run (Cntrl) did not assimilate the MODIS winds.

AIRS improves the AIRS improves the ANALYSISANALYSIS of of NargisNargis

The 3 tracks are The 3 tracks are obtained by trackingobtained by trackingthe center of Nargisthe center of Nargisin the 3 sets of in the 3 sets of ANALYSESANALYSES produced producedby the CNTRL, RADby the CNTRL, RADand AIRS and AIRS AssimilationsAssimilations..

The displacement errorThe displacement errorin the CNTRL Analysisin the CNTRL Analysisoften exceeds 150km often exceeds 150km but is substantially but is substantially mitigated by AIRS.mitigated by AIRS.

NASA Hurricane Research Science Team(selected competitively)

ROSES 08 (Science Team) ROSES 09 (Field/Instrument Team)

Scott Braun                         NASA GSFC Richard Blakeslee NASA MSFC

Shu-Hua Chen                    U. of California, Davis Paul Bui NASA ARC

William Cotton                    Colorado State U. Stephen Durden NASA JPL

Robert Hart                         Florida State U. Michael Goodman NASA MSFC &

Gerald Heymsfield              NASA GSFC Svetla Hristova-Veleva NASA JPL

Robert Houze                     U. of Washington Jeffrey Halverson UMBC/JCET

Haiyan Jiang                      U. of Utah (to FIU) Andrew Heymsfield NCAR

Tiruvalam Krishnamurti      Florida State U. Gerald Heymsfield       NASA GSFC

Greg McFarquhar               U. of Illinois Syed Ismail NASA LARC

John Molinari                      U. of Albany Michael Kavaya NASA LARC

Michael Montgomery         Naval Postgrad School Tiruvalam Krishnamurti  Florida State U.

Elizabeth Ritchie                U. of Arizona Bjorn Lambrigtsen NASA JPL

Robert Rogers                    NOAA/AOML

Nick Shay                           U of Miami

Eric Smith                           NASA GSFC

Christopher Thorncroft       U. of Albany

Edward Zipser                    U. of Utah

1/8/09 14

TOPICAL CYCLONE DATA PORTALTOPICAL CYCLONE DATA PORTAL

• The strengths that NASA brings to the interagency program for tropical cyclone research– expertise in satellite observations and retrievals

– high-resolution modelling with emphasis on sensitivity to parameterizations and initial/boundary conditions

– combining the two will help build the missing link between modelling and observations that will lead to hurricane forecast improvements

• How will the results of the research contribute to enhancing hurricane forecast and warning services?– making the hurricane portal operate in real time will put in

the hands of the operational forecasters a wealth of satellite information and ensemble model runs, thus helping them in hurricane forecasting and warning services

A Tropical Cyclone Information System – What strengths does NASA contribute?

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NASA Major Supercomputers

Columbia Supercomputer (ranked 2nd in late 2004)

• Based on SGI® NUMAflex™ architecture 20 SGI® Altix™ 3700 superclusters, each with 512 processors Global shared memory across 512 processors

• 10,240 Intel Itanium® 2 CPUs; Current processor speed: 1.5 gigahertz; Current cache: 6 megabytes

• 20 terabytes total memory; 1 terabyte of memory per 512 processors

Pleiades Supercomputer (ranked 3rd in late 2008)

• 92 Compute Cabinets (64 nodes per cabinet; 2,560 nodes; 2 quad-core processors per node)

• quad-core Xeon 5472 (Harpertown) CPUs, speed - 3GHz; Cache - 12MB per CPU

• 51,200 cores in total (512 cores per cabinet) • 50+ TB memory in total, 1 (8) GB memory per

core (node)• 500+ TB disk spaces• InfiniBand, 6,400 compute nodes• 673 teraflops

Hurricane BillGOES 3.5-km GEOS-5

72-hr forecast Initialized 2009-08-16 21z72-hr forecast Initialized 2009-08-16 21z

Science MissionDirectorate

NASA Earth System Modeling in Support of NAMMA

The 2006 NASA Modeling and Analysis Program (MAP’06)

Heaviest PrecipitationNW of Circulation Center

X

X

NASA GEOS-5 at ¼ degree resolution demonstrates skill in simulating AEW’s and tropical depressions during NAMMA

Provided value-added product to NAMMA Forecast Team

Joint GSFC-MSFC project

Simulated Center

Observed Center

NASA Hurricane Field Experiments NASA Hurricane Field Experiments

1998 2001 2005

2006 2010 GRIP

Field programs coordinated with other Federal Agencies

NASA sponsored field campaigns have helped us develop a better understanding of many hurricane properties including inner core dynamics, rapid intensification and genesis

GRIP: (Hurricane) Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes Field Experiment

• Global Hawk (UAV) (240 hours) Radar (Heymsfield/GSFC), Microwave

Radiometers (Lambrigtsen/JPL), Dropsondes (NOAA), Electric Field (Blakeslee/MSFC)

Geosynchronous Orbit Simulation

• DC-8 four engine jet (120 hours) Dual frequency precipitation radar

(Durden/JPL) Dropsondes (Halverson/UMBC),

Variety of microphysics probes (Heymsfield/NCAR)

Lidars for 3-D Winds (Kavaya/LaRC) and for high vertical resolution measurements of aerosols and water vapor (Ismail/LaRC)

In-situ measurements of temperature, moisture and aerosols (Bui/ARC)

• Six to Eight week deployment centered on September 1, 2010

RED= IIP, GREEN= IIP+AITT

Blue line: DC-8 range for 12-h flight, 6 h on station

Red lines: GH range for 30-h flight with 10, 15 and 20 h on station

Light blue X: Genesis locations for 1940-2006

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Summary

NASA satellite sensors are helping to expand weather/hurricane research frontiers

Columbia and Pleiades supercomputers support high resolution hurricane modeling

NASA sponsored field campaigns have helped us develop a better understanding of many hurricane properties including inner core dynamics, rapid intensification and genesis

NASA satellite sensor data is being under utilized in hurricane research (assimilation of satellite data has a much greater potential impact on the track and intensity forecasts)

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TRMM Data Used for Hurricane/Typhoon Monitoring

TRMM TMI data used by NOAA and int’l agencies for tropical cyclone detection, location and intensity

estimation--600 TRMM-based tropical cyclone “fixes” every year

TRMM orbit advantageous for tropical cyclone monitoring--despite narrow swath it is always in

tropics, sampling about same as one SSM/I over all tropics, but TRMM sampling best in 10-35º latitude

storm band. TMI resolution twice as good as SSM/I, about same as AMSR. Precessing orbit provides

off-time observations relative to sun-synchronous microwave observations.

TRMM image from NRL Tropical Cyclone web site

Hurricane Katrina

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Anomalies comparison: 8/4/2005 Anomalies comparison: 8/4/2005 and 7/26/2006and 7/26/2006

Hurricane Bill August 2009

Warm Core4 K at 850 hPa9 K at 250 hPa

Strong low-level Winds50 m/s

46 m/s Observed

Deep Central Pressure959 hPa

947 hPa Observed

3-day Forecast7-km GEOS-5 E-W Profiles7-km GEOS-5 E-W Profiles7-km GEOS-5 E-W Profiles7-km GEOS-5 E-W Profiles

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