3-D Hurricane Tracking

Reported September 2007

Boulder, Colo. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- 2004 … the strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade … killing ten people … causing thirteen-billion dollars in damage. Its arrival was expected. Its intensity … an absolute surprise.

We are in the middle of hurricane season again and meteorologists are rushing to test a new way to track a storm’s intensity. Scientists now know, as hurricane Charlie approached Florida three years ago, Floridians were preparing for the storm with obsolete information. Charlie landed with 25-percent more intensity than predicted. It’s a scenario that could forever be avoided with a new tracking system.

“[Hurricane Charlie] rapidly intensified from category two to category four in roughly three hours,” Wen- Chau Lee, NCAR meteorologist, says.

If only meteorologists knew then what they know now. Now, meteorologists at the national center for atmospheric research have a new software tool called "VORTRAC." It slices through approaching hurricanes to reveal a three-dimensional view of the storm and just how intense it will be. The result looks a lot like the layers of a sliced onion.

“When you cut an onion in half you see different rings. Basically what we do, we dissect a hurricane into different rings,” Lee says.

VORTRAC combines wind measurements from the Doppler radar closest to the eye of the storm with existing hurricane data to show a 3-D view of the wind. Lee says he looks forward to putting his tracking system to the test in the U.S. when the next hurricane heads our way.

Because of the limited range of Doppler radars, VORTRAC works only for hurricanes within about 120 miles of land. But that could help monitor the critical 10 to 15 hours before landfall. The National Hurricane Center is testing the system currently and expects it to be ready for use in about two years.

The Geophysical Union and the American Meteorology Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

National Center for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, Colorado
(303) 497-1000
kconrad@ucar.edu

American Geophysical Union
Washington, DC 20009-1277
(800) 966-2481
http://www.agu.org

American Meteorological Society
Boston, MA 02108-3693
(617) 227-2425
http://www.ametsoc.org

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