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

未来世纪飓风活动的变化有可能对美国沿海地区的整个经济格局产生灾难性的影响。不幸的是，由于对飓风活动变化的气候驱动因素知之甚少，因此对未来飓风风险的预测存在很大的不确定性。西大西洋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更加困难。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了解扩展到几个世纪甚至几千年前。这一方法有助于评估飓风沿着美国东海岸造成的风险如何变化。此外，研究人员将使用最先进的数值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、规划者和决策者用来改善我们对飓风风险未来可能发生的变化的准备和复原力。 研究结果将为风险建模提供信息，进而为保险和再保险行业提供信息，并为城市、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，培养和教育下一代的科学家与研究生，本科生和高中生的参与。这项研究采取了综合研究的方法，解决了两个广泛的问题：1）如何是洪水的风险变化，由于（a）风暴潮和（B）降雨？2)海洋环流的变化等过程（例如，大西洋经向翻转环流）和对低纬度火山爆发的反应调节了飓风活动，无论是一般的还是特别的美国登陆风暴？重建美国东北部、佛罗里达东海岸和墨西哥湾西北部沿着飓风登陆的过去变化，将与热带气旋相关风暴潮和波浪的流体动力学模型以及TC相关降雨的缩减估计相结合。这种方法将允许确定在过去的一千年中TC引起的洪水的风险的变化。这将构成审查未来风险和审查可能显著改变未来区域登陆概率的关键强迫机制的基线。将最新（CMIP 6）全球模型输出的降尺度与浪涌和波浪的水动力学建模相结合，用于评估TC引发洪水的当前和未来风险。此外，我们还将探讨穿透平流层的火山气溶胶对TC活动的潜在影响。此外，该研究计划研究海洋环流变化对热带气旋的影响，通过改变热带气旋登陆附近的海洋热含量来影响强烈飓风登陆的可能性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.