11-01-2007 - Uncategorized

sagar: Author=’Dan Kulpinski’ program=’5329′ video=”Hurricane Andrew heads for Louisiana on August 25, 1992, after severely damaging South Florida. Credit: NOAA and the NASA Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheres


See a larger version of this image.Insight into future hurricanes could come from a new computer model grounded in the past.

Tom Knutson is a research meteorologist with “NOAA”:http://www.noaa.gov/, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He works to create computer models, which are one tool scientists use to study hurricanes and climate change.

Knutson and his colleagues have created a new computer model for the Atlantic. To test it, they had it simulate hurricane seasons from 1980 to 2006.

Tom Knutson: _We use past data, past sea surface temperatures and past large-scale atmospheric data as inputs to this model and then we just ask this model, ‘Okay, given this large-scale situation, generate your own hurricanes as you see fit.’_

The model fairly accurately reproduced the hurricane counts during those years.

Tom Knutson: _This model seems to be able to tell the difference between an active and an inactive year in the Atlantic._

Now he can use this promising model to address key questions.

Tom Knutson: _‘Why are we now in an active era?’ and ‘If the climate changes in the way that global climate models suggest during the 21st century, what does that mean for hurricane activity in the Atlantic?’ These are the kinds of questions we have specifically designed this model to address._

And that’s how the past could tell us about hurricane activity in a warmer future.

Written by EarthSky