individual
What campus are you from?
Daytona Beach
Authors' Class Standing
Lannon McGregor, Senior
Lead Presenter's Name
Lannon McGregor
Faculty Mentor Name
Joshua Wadler
Abstract
Over the past 40 years, the radar, satellite technology, statistical probability schemes, and numerical weather prediction models that meteorologists use to study and track tropical cyclones (TCs) have become increasingly advanced and refined. This has provided scientists with a clearer view of not only TCs themselves, but the environmental factors that impact them as well. The Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (henceforth referred to as SHIPS) is an ocean basin statistical-dynamical hurricane model developed by Mark DeMaria and John Kaplan in 1989 for predicting the intensity of TCs in the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Southern Hemisphere ocean basins. This model takes into account a variety of large-scale individual environmental factors (sea surface temperatures, wind shear, etc.), along with positioning and date-logging, to provide an estimate of TC strength at 6-hour intervals. To analyze how individual environmental factors (IEFs) that impact TCs have changed over the past four decades in the Atlantic Ocean (1982-2023), this research utilizes SHIPS data to statistically analyze IEF trends. Overall, findings indicate that the environmental variables that are a part of and that interact with TCs in the Atlantic are changing at statistically significant rates. Additionally, the significance of these changes is somewhat inconsistent across the Atlantic sub-basins, with most of the notable changes noted in the Main Development Region (MDR). These findings are significant and call for further research into how and why these IEFs are changing, and by what factor they are and will impact TCs.
Did this research project receive funding support from the Office of Undergraduate Research.
No
A Statistical Analysis of Environmental Variables and Their Influence on Storm Intensity via the SHIPS Hurricane Model
Over the past 40 years, the radar, satellite technology, statistical probability schemes, and numerical weather prediction models that meteorologists use to study and track tropical cyclones (TCs) have become increasingly advanced and refined. This has provided scientists with a clearer view of not only TCs themselves, but the environmental factors that impact them as well. The Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (henceforth referred to as SHIPS) is an ocean basin statistical-dynamical hurricane model developed by Mark DeMaria and John Kaplan in 1989 for predicting the intensity of TCs in the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Southern Hemisphere ocean basins. This model takes into account a variety of large-scale individual environmental factors (sea surface temperatures, wind shear, etc.), along with positioning and date-logging, to provide an estimate of TC strength at 6-hour intervals. To analyze how individual environmental factors (IEFs) that impact TCs have changed over the past four decades in the Atlantic Ocean (1982-2023), this research utilizes SHIPS data to statistically analyze IEF trends. Overall, findings indicate that the environmental variables that are a part of and that interact with TCs in the Atlantic are changing at statistically significant rates. Additionally, the significance of these changes is somewhat inconsistent across the Atlantic sub-basins, with most of the notable changes noted in the Main Development Region (MDR). These findings are significant and call for further research into how and why these IEFs are changing, and by what factor they are and will impact TCs.