DOCSLIB.ORG

Rapid Cost Estimation for Storm Recovery Using Geographic Information System

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Rapid Cost Estimation for Storm Recovery Using Geographic Information System Rapid Cost Estimation for Storm Recovery Using Geographic Information System by Rolando A. Berríos-Montero B.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering, June 1998, The Ohio State University M.S. in Engineering Management, June 2001, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico B.S. in Civil Engineering, June 2012, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico M.S. in Economics, June 2014, University of Puerto Rico A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The School of Engineering and Applied Science of The George Washington University in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 15th , 2016 Dissertation directed by Jason Dever Professional Lecturer of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering and Steven M. F. Stuban Professional Lecturer of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering The School of Engineering and Applied Science of The George Washington University certifies that Rolando A. Berríos-Montero has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of March 18 th , 2016. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Rapid Cost Estimation for Storm Recovery Using Geographic Information System Rolando A. Berríos-Montero Dissertation Research Committee: Shahram Sarkani, Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Dissertation Co-Director Thomas Mazzuchi, Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering & Decision Sciences, Dissertation Co-Director Steven M. F. Stuban, Professorial Lecturer in Engineering Management and System Engineering, Committee Member Pavel Fomin, Professorial Lecturer in Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Committee Member E. Lile Murphree, Professor Emeritus of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Committee Member ii ©Copyright 2016 by Rolando A. Berríos-Montero All rights reserved iii Dedication To my beloved wife Ana Ligia and my daughter Ana Cristina… “…, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.” James Thomas Anthony "Jim" Valvano (March 4 th , 1993) …because this is how the three of us live every day. iv Acknowledgments I am deeply appreciative of my mother, father and my sister for their continued interest and support of my doctoral journey. I would like to express my gratitude to my advisors Dr. Stuban and Dr. Dever for their positive guidance and patience. Their direction and feedback really gave me insight and motivation to continue on this journey. I am grateful to my classmates who constantly checked on my progress over the last two years. A special thanks to George Wilamowski and Thembani Togwe for caring and for all the influential discussions and support toward the dissertation path. Their support made the world of difference. v Abstract Rapid Cost Estimation for Storm Recovery Using Geographic Information System The present research introduces a new approach to estimate the recovery costs of public property in the aftermath of a storm, by integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Estimating recovery costs for a disaster is a current concern for emergency responders. This work focuses on applying economic indicators, population data, and storm event tracking to GIS for rapidly estimating recovery costs. Firstly, recovery costs of historical events are normalized and adjusted for inflation, wealth, and population. Geospatial analysis is used to predict, manage, and learn political boundaries and population density. Secondly, rapid recovery cost estimation is accomplished by defining population, personal income, and gross domestic product. Finally, a jurisdiction fiscal capacity (JFC) is calculated illustrating the economic capability of jurisdictions to finance public property recovery, based on their economy size. The variability of estimated absolute errors between cost estimates and actual normalized costs are also examined. The results reveal that JFC is a more suitable metric for rapidly estimating recovery costs of public properties than the method presently followed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This new approach effectively aids the local government in providing quick cost guidance to recovery responders, while offering the ability to construct accurate recovery cost estimates. vi Table of Contents Dedication ......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Abstract ............................................................................................................................. vi Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. vii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. ix List of Tables .................................................................................................................... xi List of Acronyms ............................................................................................................. xii Chapter 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Systems Engineering Cost Estimation ................................................................. 1 1.2 Problem Statement ................................................................................................. 2 1.3 Purpose .................................................................................................................... 3 1.4 Approach ................................................................................................................. 4 1.5 Significance ............................................................................................................ 7 1.6 Limitation ................................................................................................................ 7 1.7 Outline ..................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 2. Literature Review ......................................................................................... 10 2.1 Actual cost estimation models ............................................................................ 10 2.1.1 Components of actual cost estimating models .......................................... 12 2.1.2 Florida public hurricane loss projection model ........................................ 16 2.2 Cost estimation........................................................................................................ 19 2.3 GIS-based cost estimate .......................................................................................... 22 Chapter 3. Data ................................................................................................................. 29 3.1 Storms ..................................................................................................................... 30 3.2 Historical recovery cost .......................................................................................... 32 3.3 Population and economic indicators ....................................................................... 32 vii Chapter 4. Methodology ................................................................................................... 35 4.1 Methodology approach ........................................................................................... 35 4.2 Storm analysis ......................................................................................................... 38 4.3 Normalized Cost ..................................................................................................... 42 4.4 Jurisdiction fiscal capacity ...................................................................................... 43 4.5 Recovery cost estimation ........................................................................................ 44 Chapter 5. Results and Analysis ....................................................................................... 48 5.1 Mahalanobis Distance (MD) ................................................................................... 52 5.2 Hurricane Georges as outlier .................................................................................. 56 5.3 Median absolute deviation (MAD) ......................................................................... 58 5.4 GIS output ............................................................................................................... 71 5.5 Cost exceedance probability ................................................................................... 82 5.5.1 Random sampling methodology ...................................................................... 83 5.6 Log-normal distribution .......................................................................................... 86 Chapter 6. Conclusion ......................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 1 Climatology of Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Over
    CLIMATOLOGY OF TROPICAL CYCLONE RAINFALL OVER PUERTO RICO: PROCESSES, PATTERNS AND IMPACTS By JOSÉ JAVIER HERNÁNDEZ AYALA A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2016 1 © 2016 José Javier Hernández Ayala 2 To my beloved Puerto Rico, its atmosphere, environment and people 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The main ideas behind the development of this dissertation came from multiple experiences with tropical cyclones while living in Puerto Rico. Those life experiences motivated me to explore the climate of the tropics, with special attention to the rainfall associated with those extreme events and their role in Puerto Rico’s physical geography. The research conducted in this dissertation was possible from support of Dr. Corene Matyas, Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator at the Department of Geography at the University of Florida. Her magnificent mentoring and continuous support enable me to invest the necessary effort and time to complete this dissertation. I am truly grateful for her exceptional role as my committee chair. I want to thank Dr. Peter Waylen for his continuous support and all of the inspiring conversations we’ve had about research and life in general that gave me even more strength to continue in this journey towards the PhD. I thank Dr. Timothy Fik for sharing his expertise in quantitative methods through two great courses and for inspiring me to aspire to more in life. Thanks to Dr. Zhong-Ren Peng for being my external committee member and teaching me more about the human dimension of climate related phenomena.
    [Show full text]
  • Predicting Hurricane Trajectories Using a Recurrent Neural Network
    The Thirty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-19) Predicting Hurricane Trajectories Using a Recurrent Neural Network Sheila Alemany,1 Jonathan Beltran,1 Adrian Perez,1 Sam Ganzfried1,2 1School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL 2Ganzfried Research, Miami, FL fsalem010, jbelt021, apere946g@fiu.edu, [email protected] Abstract have been recently used to forecast increasingly compli- cated systems. RNNs are a class of artificial neural networks Hurricanes are cyclones circulating about a defined center where the modification of weights allows the model to learn whose closed wind speeds exceed 75 mph originating over tropical and subtropical waters. At landfall, hurricanes can intricate dynamic temporal behaviors. A RNN with the ca- result in severe disasters. The accuracy of predicting their tra- pability of efficiently modeling complex nonlinear temporal jectory paths is critical to reduce economic loss and save hu- relationships of a hurricane could increase the accuracy of man lives. Given the complexity and nonlinearity of weather predicting future hurricane path forecasts. Development of data, a recurrent neural network (RNN) could be beneficial such an approach is the focus of this paper. in modeling hurricane behavior. We propose the application While others have used RNNs in the forecasting of of a fully connected RNN to predict the trajectory of hur- weather data, to our knowledge this is the first fully con- ricanes. We employed the RNN over a fine grid to reduce nected recurrent neural networks employed using a grid typical truncation errors. We utilized their latitude, longitude, model for hurricane trajectory forecasts. The proposed wind speed, and pressure publicly provided by the National method can more accurately predict trajectories of hurri- Hurricane Center (NHC) to predict the trajectory of a hur- ricane at 6-hour intervals.
    [Show full text]
  • Tropical Storm and Environmental Forcing on Regional Blue Crab (Callinectes Sapidus) Settlement
    FISHERIES OCEANOGRAPHY Fish. Oceanogr. 19:2, 89–106, 2010 Tropical storm and environmental forcing on regional blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) settlement DAVID B. EGGLESTON,* NATHALIE B. ment events generally associated with ‘onshore’ storm REYNS, LISA L. ETHERINGTON,à GAYLE R. tracks that made landfall from the ocean and moved PLAIA AND LIAN XIE inland along a southeasterly ⁄ northwesterly path, or Department of Marine, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, North ‘coastal’ storms that followed a path roughly parallel to Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8208, USA the coastline and were located <300 km offshore of the coast. Key words: blue crab, larval dispersal, hurricanes, ABSTRACT recruitment, settlement, tropical storms Global climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and magnitude of hurricanes, typhoons and other extreme cyclonic disturbance events, with little INTRODUCTION known consequences for recruitment dynamics of marine species that rely on wind-driven larval trans- Extreme variation in recruitment of many finfish and port to coastal settlement and nursery habitats. We invertebrate fisheries (Caddy and Gulland, 1983; Sis- conducted a large-scale settlement study of the blue senwine, 1984; Hare and Able, 2007) often masks the crab (Callinectes sapidus) in the Croatan-Albemarle- effects of overexploitation, thereby hampering man- Pamlico Estuarine System (CAPES) in North agement efforts (Ludwig et al., 1993). The need to Carolina, the second largest estuary in the US, during understand seemingly chaotic fluctuations in popula- a 10-yr period that encompassed 35 tropical storms of tion sizes of animals and plants fuels efforts to identify varying magnitudes and tracks, to determine the the relative roles of intertwined external forcing and effects of hurricane track, wind speed and direction as internal feedbacks on population dynamics (May, well as lunar-associated explanatory variables on 1981; Higgins et al., 1997; Cowen et al., 2000; Hare spatiotemporal variation in settlement.
    [Show full text]
  • Development of an Objective Scheme to Estimate Tropical Cyclone Intensity from Digital Geostationary Satellite Infrared Imagery
    172 WEATHER AND FORECASTING VOLUME 13 Development of an Objective Scheme to Estimate Tropical Cyclone Intensity from Digital Geostationary Satellite Infrared Imagery CHRISTOPHER S. VELDEN AND TIMOTHY L. OLANDER Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, Madison, Wisconsin RAYMOND M. ZEHR Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch, NOAA/NESDIS, Fort Collins, Colorado (Manuscript received 17 July 1996, in ®nal form 10 August 1997) ABSTRACT The standard method for estimating the intensity of tropical cyclones is based on satellite observations (Dvorak technique) and is utilized operationally by tropical analysis centers around the world. The technique relies on image pattern recognition along with analyst interpretation of empirically based rules regarding the vigor and organization of convection surrounding the storm center. While this method performs well enough in most cases to be employed operationally, there are situations when analyst judgment can lead to discrepancies between different analysis centers estimating the same storm. In an attempt to eliminate this subjectivity, a computer-based algorithm that operates objectively on digital infrared information has been developed. An original version of this algorithm (engineered primarily by the third author) has been signi®cantly modi®ed and advanced to include selected ``Dvorak rules,'' additional constraints, and a time-averaging scheme. This modi®ed version, the Objective Dvorak Technique (ODT), is applicable to tropical cyclones that have attained tropical storm or hurricane strength. The performance of the ODT is evaluated on cases from the 1995 and 1996 Atlantic hurricane seasons. Reconnaissance aircraft measurements of minimum surface pressure are used to validate the satellite-based estimates. Statistical analysis indicates the technique to be competitive with, and in some cases superior to, the Dvorak-based intensity estimates produced operationally by satellite analysts from tropical analysis centers.
    [Show full text]
  • Federal Register/Vol. 85, No. 169/Monday, August 31, 2020
    54148 Federal Register / Vol. 85, No. 169 / Monday, August 31, 2020 / Notices DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Law Through Improved Agency Department published a notice in the Guidance Documents.’’ 84 FR 55235. Federal Register announcing that its Notice of the Rescission of Outdated Section 3(b) of the E.O. requires the guidance portal was operational, in Guidance Documents Department to ‘‘review its guidance compliance with section 3(a) of the E.O. documents and, consistent with 85 FR 11056. AGENCY: Office of the Secretary, applicable law, rescind those guidance Section 4 of E.O. 13891 requires the Department of Education. documents that it determines should no Department to finalize regulations to set ACTION: Notice. longer be in effect.’’ This notice notifies forth processes and procedures for the public, including the Department’s issuing guidance documents. The SUMMARY: The Secretary announces the guidance documents the Department of stakeholders, of the guidance Department’s Spring 2020 Unified Education (Department) is rescinding documents the Department rescinds as Agenda provides that the timetable for because they are outdated, after outdated (e.g., superseded by these interim final regulations is August conducting a review of its guidance subsequent statutory amendments or 2020. See www.reginfo.gov/public/do/ under Executive Order (E.O.) 13891. enactments), in accordance with section eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202004& 3(b) of E.O. 13891. The guidance RIN=1801-AA22. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: documents identified as being rescinded The below table lists the guidance Lynn Mahaffie, Department of in this notice do not include any documents the Department rescinds, the Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, guidance documents the Department office within the Department that issued Room 6E–231, Washington, DC 20202.
    [Show full text]
  • The Resilience of Coral Reef Communities to Climate-Driven Disturbances
    THE RESILIENCE OF CORAL REEF COMMUNITIES TO CLIMATE-DRIVEN DISTURBANCES Laura Mudge A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Biology Department in the College of Arts and Sciences. Chapel Hill 2020 Approved by: John Bruno Peter White Allen Hurlbert James Umabanhowar Karl Castillo © 2020 Laura Mudge ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Laura Mudge: The resilience of coral reef communities to climate-driven disturbances (Under the direction of John F. Bruno) Climate change is expected to increase the intensity and frequency of natural disturbances which are important drivers of coral reef community structure and functioning. Past work has often quantified the effect of singular, isolated events on living coral cover (mainly on pristine, high cover reefs), yet we know little about how disturbances affect coral community structure on contemporary, degraded reefs. Additionally, we know that disturbances, including hurricanes, coral bleaching, and coral disease, have the potential to interact, but we do not have a general understanding of the outcomes of these interactions on coral communities. Disturbances interact by altering the likelihood, extent, or severity of a subsequent event, or by altering the recovery time after the next event. These interactions have the potential to create novel or compound effects, which could affect coral community resilience. My dissertation quantifies how disturbances drive changes in scleractinian coral communities through a framework that evaluates the impacts of disturbances as multiple, interacting events. First, I investigated the ecological conditions related to recent recovery of elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) and found that regrowth correlated strongly with abundant herbivore populations, particularly Diadema antillarum.
    [Show full text]
  • The Impact of Satellite Winds on Experimental GFDL Hurricane Model Forecasts
    APRIL 2001 SODEN ET AL. 835 The Impact of Satellite Winds on Experimental GFDL Hurricane Model Forecasts BRIAN J. SODEN Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Princeton, New Jersey CHRISTOPHER S. VELDEN Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, University of WisconsinÐMadison, Madison, Wisconsin ROBERT E. TULEYA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Princeton, New Jersey (Manuscript received 12 April 2000, in ®nal form 22 August 2000) ABSTRACT A series of experimental forecasts are performed to evaluate the impact of enhanced satellite-derived winds on numerical hurricane track predictions. The winds are derived from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-8 (GOES-8) multispectral radiance observations by tracking cloud and water vapor patterns from suc- cessive satellite images. A three-dimensional optimum interpolation method is developed to assimilate the satellite winds directly into the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) hurricane prediction system. A series of parallel forecasts are then performed, both with and without the assimilation of GOES winds. Except for the assimilation of the satellite winds, the model integrations are identical in all other respects. A strength of this study is the large number of experiments performed. Over 100 cases are examined from 11 different storms covering three seasons (1996±98), enabling the authors to account for and examine the case-to-case variability in the forecast results when performing the assessment. On average, assimilation of the GOES winds leads to statistically signi®cant improvements for all forecast periods, with the relative reductions in track error ranging from ;5% at 12 h to ;12% at 36 h.
    [Show full text]
  • Predicting Hurricane Trajectories Using a Recurrent Neural Network
    Predicting Hurricane Trajectories using a Recurrent Neural Network Sheila Alemany1, Jonathan Beltran1, Adrian Perez1, Sam Ganzfried12 1 School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL 2 Ganzfried Research salem010@fiu.edu, jbelt021@fiu.edu, apere946@fiu.edu, [email protected] Abstract the modification of weights allows the model to learn intri- cate dynamic temporal behavior. An RNN with the capability Hurricanes are cyclones circulating about a defined of efficiently modeling complex nonlinear temporal relation- center whose closed wind speeds exceed 75 mph ships of a hurricane could increase the accuracy of predicting originating over tropical and subtropical waters. At future hurricane path forecasts. Development of such an ap- landfall, hurricanes can result in severe disasters. proach is the focus of this paper. The accuracy of predicting their trajectory paths While others have used RNNs in the forecasting of weather is critical to reduce economic loss and save hu- data, to our knowledge this is the first fully connected recur- man lives. Given the complexity and nonlinearity rent neural networks employed using a grid model for hur- of weather data, a recurrent neural network (RNN) ricane trajectory forecasts. The proposed method can more could be beneficial in modeling hurricane behav- accurately predict trajectories of hurricanes compared to tra- ior. We propose the application of a fully connected ditional forecast methods employed by the National Hurri- RNN to predict the trajectory of hurricanes. We cane Center (NHC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric employed the RNN over a fine grid to reduce typi- Administration (NOAA). This paper summarizes our present cal truncation errors.
    [Show full text]
  • Disaster Recovery Best Practices for Dominican Republic's Contact Center
    Rochester Institute of Technology RIT Scholar Works Theses 2010 Disaster recovery best practices for Dominican Republic’s contact center Dhariana Gutiérrez Almonte Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses Recommended Citation Gutiérrez Almonte, Dhariana, "Disaster recovery best practices for Dominican Republic’s contact center" (2010). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by RIT Scholar Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of RIT Scholar Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Disaster Recovery Best Practices for Dominican Republic’s Contact Center By Dhariana Gutierrez Almonte Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Networking and Systems Administration Rochester Institute of Technology B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences April, 2010 Rochester Institute of Technology B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences Master of Science in Computer Security and Information Assurance Thesis Approval Form Student Name: Dhariana Gutierrez Almonte . Thesis Title: Disaster Recovery Best Practices for Dominican Republic’s Contact Center . Thesis Committee Name Signature Date PhD. Yin Pan Chair PhD. Charles Border Committee Member Ms. Arlene Estevez Committee Member Thesis Reproduction Permission Form Rochester Institute of Technology B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences Master of Science in Computer Security and Information Assurance Disaster Recovery Best Practices for Dominican Republic’s Contact Center I, Dhariana Gutierrez Almonte, hereby grant permission to the Wallace Library of the Rochester Institute of Technology to reproduce my thesis in whole or in part.
    [Show full text]
  • Final Discovery Report
    Final Discovery Report (DRAFT) Río Grande de Loíza Watershed, HUC10 2101000504 Municipalities of Aguas Buenas, Caguas, Canóvanas, Carolina 1, Gurabo, Juncos, Las Piedras, Loíza, San Lorenzo, and Trujillo Alto, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico September 2017 1 Separate NFIP Community Table of Contents Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... i List of Acronyms .................................................................................................................... v Executive Summary ............................................................................................................... 1 1. Discovery Overview ......................................................................................................... 3 1.1 Discovery Objectives ........................................................................................................ 4 1.2 Discovery Process ............................................................................................................ 4 1.3 Discovery Outputs ............................................................................................................ 5 2. Watershed Overview ....................................................................................................... 6 2.1 Geography ........................................................................................................................ 6 2.2 Land Use: Classification and Zoning ................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Monthly Weather Review May 1999
    VOLUME 127 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW MAY 1999 Atlantic Hurricane Season of 1996 RICHARD J. PASCH AND LIXION A. AVILA National Hurricane Center, NWS, NOAA, Miami, Florida (Manuscript received 18 February 1998, in ®nal form 23 April 1998) ABSTRACT A summary of the 1996 Atlantic hurricane season is given, and the individual tropical storms and hurricanes are described. This was the second active year in a row with a large number of intense hurricanes. Hurricane Fran, which hit the coast of North Carolina, was the strongest system to make landfall, and also the most destructive. 1. Introduction ellite information during the 1996 season came from the geostationary satellite GOES-8. Position and intensity For the second consecutive year, the Atlantic basin estimates using satellite data are obtained by using the experienced above-normal hurricane activity. Of the 13 Dvorak (1984) technique. Most of the aerial reconnais- tropical storms that developed in 1996, 9 reached hur- sance was accomplished by the ``Hurricane Hunters'' ricane intensity. The two-year total of 20 Atlantic hur- of the U.S. Air Force Reserve Unit. Reconnaissance ricanes in 1995 and 1996 is the highest ever recorded, aircraft are routinely deployed into Atlantic tropical cy- going back to at least when accurate records began in the mid-1940s. Six of the hurricanes became ``major,'' clones that pose a potential threat to land areas. These that is, had maximum 1-min winds in excess of 49 m aircraft observations are of vital importance to the track- s21 [category three or higher on the Saf®r±Simpson Hur- ing and forecasting of tropical cyclones and for the is- ricane Scale (SSHS); Simpson (1974)] in 1996.
    [Show full text]
  • Irene Sweeps Across Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands
    Irene Sweeps across Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands Gary S. Votaw Althea Austin-Smith Luis Rosa Rafael Mojica a. Synoptic History Irene was a quite large and impressive tropical wave during most of its journey across the Atlantic Ocean during the week of August 14-20, 2011. For most of this time the wave was nearly surrounded by dry air and with enough vertical wind shear to ensure that any intensification would be slow. Its forward speed of 20 mph somewhat aided the shear in keeping it weak. After the tropical wave reached a position near latitude 14oN and longitude 52oW on August 19 (Friday) at 600 pm AST (2200 UTC) its upper level circulation (outflow) was growing rapidly, becoming almost twice the size that Tropical Storm Emily had at approximately the same location barely 2 weeks before. To the north was a deep high pressure ridge at latitude 25oN and to the northwest a remnant upper level tropospheric Fig. 1. Descending pass of the advanced scatterometer (ASCAT) from satellite on August 20. trough which continued to weaken. The growing size and influence of the wave decreased the effect of dry air being entrained while the available dry air surrounding it decreased as well. The system was moving into an area of less vertical shear, eventually slowing its forward speed, and over warmer water. Early on August 20 the advanced scatterometer (ASCAT) showed that, although the winds were strengthening, only a small area had surface winds reaching 30 knots and the circulation near 57oW was far from being closed (Fig.
    [Show full text]