Dynamics of Marine Storm Intensification

Monitoring of storms have been made possible since the advent of earth-observing satellites. Now, with the high-resolution ocean winds observed by scatterometers, not only can we monitor oceanic storms, but also use the wind information to estimate storm intensities, in particular, central pressures and pressure fields associated with storms.

A two-layer planetary boundary layer (PBL) model has been modified to derive surface pressure fields using scatterometer winds for both mid-latitude storms and tropical cyclones. This PBL model relates the geostrophic wind vector to surface wind vector, surface roughness, stratification, secondary flow and thermal winds.

We will use the surface wind vectors gathered from SeaWinds on the QuikSCAT Mission in 25 km x 25 km resolution for our study. Pressure fields and central pressures will be derived in the near-storm regions during different stages of cyclone development. Contributions of various physical processes to the dynamics of storm intensification are examined during the life cycles of storms.