PREEVENTS Track 2: Collaborative Research: Predicting Hurricane Risk along the United States East Coast in a Changing Climate

未来一个世纪飓风活动的变化可能会对美国沿海地区的整个经济格局造成灾难性影响。不幸的是，对未来飓风风险的预测存在重大不确定性，因为飓风活动变化的气候驱动因素知之甚少。大西洋西部飓风发生的仪器记录非常短，这使得诊断飓风活动的气候控制变得困难，这加剧了这一点。该项目利用北大西洋西部飓风活动的历史和长期地质重建，将我们对飓风发生的知识扩展到几个世纪甚至几千年前。这种方法可以评估美国东海岸飓风带来的风险发生了怎样的变化。此外，研究人员将使用最先进的数字模型来诊断导致飓风活动变化的关键气候条件，并提供对未来飓风风险的改进预测。从这项工作中吸取的许多经验教训将被更广泛的科学界以及规划者和决策者用来改进我们对飓风风险未来可能发生的变化的准备和复原力。结果将为风险建模提供信息，进而为保险和再保险行业以及在市、州和联邦各级减轻热带气旋危害的努力提供信息。最后，该项目将提供机会，通过研究生、本科生和高中生的参与，培训和教育下一代科学家。这项研究采用综合研究方法，解决两个广泛的问题：1)由于(A)风暴潮和(B)降雨，洪水风险是如何变化的？2)海洋环流(例如，大西洋经向翻转环流)的变化和对低纬火山喷发的反应等过程如何调节飓风活动，无论是一般的还是专门针对美国的登陆风暴？重建美国东北部、佛罗里达东海岸和墨西哥湾西北部飓风登陆的过去变化，将与热带气旋相关风暴潮和海浪的流体动力学模拟以及与TC相关的降雨量的下调估计相结合。这一方法将能够确定过去一千年来热带气旋引起的洪水风险的变化。这将构成审查未来风险和审查可能显着改变未来区域登陆概率的关键强迫机制的基线。最新的(CMIP6)全球模式输出与涌浪和海浪的水动力模拟相结合，将被用来评估当前和未来TC引发的洪水的风险。此外，我们还将探索穿透平流层的火山气溶胶对TC活动的潜在影响。此外，这项研究计划考察海洋环流变化对塔塔咨询公司的影响，通过改变接近登陆的塔塔咨询公司可获得的海洋热量含量来影响强烈飓风登陆的概率。这项裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Changes to hurricane activity in the coming century has the potential to catastrophically impact the entire economic landscape of American coastal region. Unfortunately, significant uncertainty in projections of future hurricane risk exist because the climatic drivers of changes in hurricane activity is poorly known. This is exacerbated by the exceedingly short instrumental record of hurricane occurrence in the western Atlantic, which makes diagnosing the climatic controls on hurricane activity difficult. This project utilizes historical and long-term geological reconstructions of hurricane activity in the western North Atlantic, which extends our knowledge of hurricane occurrence back centuries and even millennia. This approach allows assessment of how the risk posed by hurricanes along the east coast of the United States has changed. Further, the researchers will use state of the art numerical models to both diagnose the key climatic conditions that contribute to changes in hurricane activity and to provide improved projections of future hurricane risk. Many of the lessons learned from this work will be used by the broader scientific community and planners and decision-makers to improve our preparedness and resilience to possible future changes in hurricane risk. The results will inform risk modeling, which in turn informs the insurance and re-insurance industries, as well as efforts to mitigate tropical cyclone hazards at the city, state and federal levels. Finally, the project will provide the opportunity to train and educate the next generation of scientists with the engagement of graduate, undergraduate and high school students.This study takes an integrated research approach that addresses two broad questions: 1) How is the risk of floods changing due to (a) storm surge and (b) rainfall? 2) How do processes like changes in ocean circulations (e.g., Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) and the response to low latitude volcanic eruptions modulate hurricane activity, both generally and specifically for US landfalling storms? Reconstruction of past changes in hurricane landfalls along the Northeast US, Florida east coast, and northwestern Gulf of Mexico will be coupled with hydrodynamic modeling of tropical cyclone related storm surges and waves and downscaled estimates of TC-related rainfall. This approach will allow determination of changes in risk of TC-induced flooding over the last millennium. This will form the baseline for examining future risk and for examining critical forcing mechanisms that may significantly alter future regional landfall probabilities. Downscaling the latest (CMIP6) global model output coupled with hydrodynamic modeling of surge and waves will be used to assess current and future risk of TC-induced flooding. In addition, we will explore the potential influence of volcanic aerosols that penetrate the stratosphere on TC activity. Further, this study plans to examine the influence of changes in ocean circulation on TCs, which affects the probability of intense hurricane landfalls by altering the amount of ocean heat content available to TCs close to landfall.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.