Extended Abstract (116K)P1.6
A Coastal Internal Boundary Layer within a Tropical Cyclone
J. Rob Howard, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX; and J. L. Schroeder
One of the goals of the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center at Texas Tech University (TTU) is to better understand the surface layer wind characteristics in landfalling tropical cyclones. Recently, efforts have been made to characterize the internal boundary layer (IBL) created in the onshore flow regime near the coastal interface; determining the magnitude and location of this wind transition is vitally important for the design of structures located in the immediate vicinity of the coastline. A study of past literature on IBL’s reveals that the near-ground transition typically occurs within 1-2 km of the change in surface roughness, although many of those previous studies were carried out in cases of lower wind speeds. In hopes of characterizing coastal IBL’s for higher wind speed cases, instrumented towers were deployed in locations where onshore winds were likely to occur as a result of the passage of a tropical cyclone. Preliminary results from this experiment, including roughness and IBL characteristics for various deployment sites and wind flow characteristics both within and outside of the IBL, will be presented at the conference. This work is part of the continuing TTU Wind Engineering Mobile Instrumented Tower Experiment (WEMITE).
Poster Session 1, Tropical Cyclones, Large-scale Dynamics and Convection
Monday, 29 April 2002, 11:00 AM-12:30 PM
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