Researchers develop new metric to measure destructive potential of hurricanes

TIKE designed to focus on size of storms as well as duration and intensity

2013-04-29

(Press-News.org) TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Researchers at Florida State University have developed a new metric to measure seasonal Atlantic tropical cyclone activity that focuses on the size of storms in addition to the duration and intensity, a measure that may prove important when considering a hurricane's potential for death and destruction.

Just ask the survivors of Hurricane Sandy.

The 2012 hurricane was only a Category 2 storm on the often referenced Saffir-Simpson scale when it became the largest hurricane on record, killing 285 people in its path in seven different countries and becoming the second costliest in U.S. history. Likewise, Hurricane Katrina was a weaker storm than 1969's Camille but caused much more destruction even though the two hurricanes followed essentially the same path.

The new metric, called Track Integrated Kinetic Energy (TIKE), builds on the concept of Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE) developed in 2007 to more accurately measure the destructive potential of a storm. IKE involves using kinetic energy scales with the surface stress that forces storm surge and waves and the horizontal wind loads specified by the American Society of Civil Engineers. TIKE expands the concept by accumulating IKE over the lifespan of a tropical cyclone and over all named tropical cyclones in the hurricane season.

"Representing the activity of an Atlantic hurricane season by a number is a very difficult task," said Vasu Misra, an associate professor of meteorology in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and FSU's Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS). "TIKE gives a succinct picture by taking into account the number of tropical cyclones in the season, the duration of each tropical cyclone and the time history of the wind force over a large area surrounding each tropical cyclone. This makes TIKE much more reliable as an objective measure of the seasonal activity of the Atlantic hurricanes than existing metrics."

Misra developed TIKE through a collaboration with Steven DiNapoli, a former COAPS data analyst, and Mark Powell, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration atmospheric scientist currently stationed at COAPS who created IKE with a colleague six years ago. Their paper, "The Track Integrated Kinetic Energy of the Atlantic Tropical Cyclones," was published in the American Meteorological Society's Monthly Weather Review.

Misra, DiNapoli and Powell calculated TIKE for each hurricane season, including all named tropical cyclones in the Atlantic from 1990 through 2011, and found larger TIKE values during La Niña conditions and warm tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature conditions. The information will help them in developing a model that can predict TIKE for an entire season — a prediction that could help emergency managers, businesses and residents with preparedness.

"I look forward to the global climate models improving enough to allow skillful predictions of storm size, which will help us predict TIKE for an upcoming season," Powell said.

TIKE is not intended as an alternative to existing metrics but as a complimentary tool, the researchers said.

The need for more information about the potential for destruction was brought home during the 2012 season. The Integrated Kinetic Energy calculation that TIKE is based on was more than 300 terajoules for Hurricane Sandy. The figure, which represents units of energy, was the largest IKE measurement for any hurricane between 1990 and 2006.

"That means that Sandy actually had more wind forcing over a large area than Hurricane Katrina," Misra said. "If the public was aware that this number was so high, which is an indication of the large potential for damage from storm surge and waves, some of them might have been able to make better life- and property-saving decisions."

### This research was supported by grants from NOAA, the Southeast Ecological Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

CONTACT: Vasu Misra Jill Elish, University Communications
850-644-8345
jelish@admin.fsu.edu

By Jill Elish END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Dark field imaging of rattle-type silica nanorattles coated gold nanoparticles in vitro and in vivo

2013-04-29

In recent years, metal nanoparticles have showed great application prospect in the field of biological imaging, cancer diagnosis and treatment due to its unique optical scattering and optical absorption properties. In many metal materials, gold nanoparticles have caused concerns in the field because of its simple preparation, easy to modify advantages. However, the poor stability in physiological fluids environment and the potential toxicity of gold nanoparticles always restricts its application in the biological field. TANG Fangqiong and her group from Laboratory of ...

Treatment by naturopathic doctors shows reduction in cardiovascular risk factors

2013-04-29

Counselling and treatment with naturopathic care as well as enhanced usual care reduced the prevalence of metabolic syndrome, a risk factor for heart disease, by 17% over a year for participants in a randomized controlled trial published in CMAJ. Researchers enrolled 246 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers at 3 study sites (Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton) for a year-long clinical trial to determine whether naturopathic lifestyle counselling helped to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Of the total sample, 207 people completed the study. The control ...

Leadership emerges spontaneously during games

2013-04-29

Video game and augmented-reality game players can spontaneously build virtual teams and leadership structures without special tools or guidance, according to researchers. Players in a game that mixed real and online worlds organized and operated in teams that resembled a military organization with only rudimentary online tools available and almost no military background, said Tamara Peyton, doctoral student in information sciences and technology, Penn State. "The fact that they formed teams and interacted as well as they did may mean that game designers should resist ...

Growing new arteries, bypassing blocked ones

2013-04-29

New Haven, Conn. – Scientific collaborators from Yale School of Medicine and University College London (UCL) have uncovered the molecular pathway by which new arteries may form after heart attacks, strokes and other acute illnesses bypassing arteries that are blocked. Their study appears in the April 29 issue of Developmental Cell. Arteries form in utero and during development, but can also form in adults when organs become deprived of oxygen — for example, after a heart attack. The organs release a molecular signal called VEGF. Working with mice, the Yale-UCL team ...

Fertilizers provide mixed benefits to soil in 50-year Kansas study

2013-04-29

Fertilizing with inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus definitely improves crop yields, but does it also improve the soil? The latest study to tackle this question has yielded mixed results. While 50 years of inorganic fertilization did increase soil organic carbon stocks in a long-term experiment in western Kansas, the practice seemingly failed to enhance soil aggregate stability—a key indicator of soil structural quality that helps dictate how water moves through soil and soil's resistance to erosion. The results of the research, which was carried out in continuous corn ...

Rear seat design -- a priority for children's safety in cars

2013-04-29

2013 — A research report released today from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) provides specific recommendations for optimizing the rear seat of passenger vehicles to better protect its most common occupants — children and adolescents. By bringing technologies already protecting front seat passengers to the rear seat and modifying the geometry of the rear seat to better fit this age group, the US could achieve important reductions in serious injury and death. Motor vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of death for children older than 4 years and resulted ...

Scientists reach the ultimate goal -- controlling chirality in carbon nanotubes

2013-04-29

An ultimate goal in the field of carbon nanotube research is to synthesise single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with controlled chiralities. Twenty years after the discovery of SWNTs, scientists from Aalto University in Finland, A.M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute RAS in Russia and the Center for Electron Nanoscopy of Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have managed to control chirality in carbon nanotubes during their chemical vapor deposition synthesis. Carbon nanotube structure is defined by a pair of integers known as chiral indices (n,m), in other words, ...

Postcode inequality for cancer diagnosis 'costs lives'

2013-04-29

Hundreds of women with breast cancer living in England's most deprived areas would have better survival rates if they were diagnosed at the same stage as those who lived in affluent areas. A new study led by the University of Leicester, working with colleagues from Public Health England and the University of Cambridge, investigated how much of a difference late-stage diagnosis had on women from deprived areas. The team calculated how many deaths would be postponed beyond 5 years from diagnosis if as many women in the more deprived areas were diagnosed at an earlier ...

Visitors and residents: Students' attitudes to academic use of social media

2013-04-29

University of Leicester-led research has shown that university students behave very differently when using social media as part of their academic learning. Some students happily use social networking to share information about their course with their peers, in a similar way to how they might talk to friends on Facebook. Others are much more targeted in their use of online tools – and will only log on to get the information they need, when they need it. Visitors and Residents: mapping student attitudes to academic use of social networks, published in the journal Learning, ...

Medicaid-insured children have limited access to dermatologists, SLU researchers find

2013-04-29

ST. LOUIS – A recent Saint Louis University study revealed that Medicaid-insured children with eczema, an inflammatory skin condition that affects 20 percent children in the United States, do not have easy access to dermatologists. "This is a complex problem and a major health disparity in our country," said Elaine Siegfried, M.D., professor of pediatrics at SLU and the principal investigator of the study. "Thirty percent of all children seen in primary care offices have a skin problem. It's an everyday issue." SLU researchers found that only 19 percent of all dermatologists ...

Researchers from MARE ULisboa discover that the European catfish, an invasive species in Portugal, has a prolonged breeding season, enhancing its invasive potential

Researchers develop new metric to measure destructive potential of hurricanes

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: