The Governing Dynamics and Predictability of Recurving Eastern North Pacific Tropical Cyclones

当飓风从热带向北移动到中纬度地区时，它们会遇到更冷的环境和更凉爽的海水，有时会转变为热带外气旋。这些非热带气旋和热带气旋的残余物不会转变，可能会通过暴雨、极端温度和野火(由闪电引发)产生重大的社会影响，这些都限制了预测的确定性。尽管在大西洋和北太平洋西部进行了广泛的研究，但东太平洋对对这些事件重要的大气过程的科学了解有限。研究人员和研究生将通过研究这些风暴的演变如何受到西太平洋和中太平洋盆地上游条件的影响，以及哪些大气流动模式促成了墨西哥和美国西部这些风暴不太频繁但重大的影响，来调查为什么东太平洋相对较少的飓风转变为热带气旋。这些任务将通过使用来自全球天气预报模型的数据集的气候学、合成和案例研究分析来完成。除了更好地了解导致北太平洋东部飓风变成副热带气旋并在美国西部产生重大影响的大气过程外，研究人员还将为研究生的培训和高级教育做出贡献，与科学研究界分享研究结果，并将我们的研究成果纳入课堂和推广活动。研究人员和研究生将与国家气象局圣地亚哥办公室的预报员合作，帮助将我们的研究成果转化为业务，并更好地告知与热带气旋相关的危险。还将通过会议、讲习班和使用奥尔巴尼大学大气和环境科学系地图列表服务器，与国际和国家大气界讨论和扩大研究成果。最后，调查人员打算通过美国地球物理联盟桥梁计划增加学习大气科学的研究生中未被充分代表的少数族裔的代表性。这一奖项反映了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。

When hurricanes, more broadly known as tropical cyclones, move northward from the tropics into the middle latitudes, they encounter colder environments and cooler ocean waters, sometimes transitioning into extra-tropical cyclones. These extra-tropical cyclones, and the remnants of tropical cyclones that do not transition, can produce significant societal impacts through heavy rainfall, temperature extremes, and wildfires (fueled by lightning strikes), which have limited forecast certainty. Although studied extensively in the Atlantic and western North Pacific oceans, scientific understanding of the atmospheric processes important for these events is limited over the eastern Pacific Ocean. The investigators and graduate students will investigate why a relatively small number of hurricanes in the eastern Pacific transition into extra-tropical cyclones by examining how the evolution of these storms are impacted by conditions upstream over the western and central Pacific Ocean basins, and what atmospheric flow patterns foster infrequent, but significant, impacts from these storms over Mexico and the western United States. These tasks will be accomplished by means of climatological, composite, and case study analyses using datasets from global weather forecasting models.In addition to a better understanding of the atmospheric processes that cause eastern North Pacific hurricanes to become extra-tropical cyclones and produce major impacts in the western United States, the investigators will contribute to the training and advanced education of graduate students, share findings with the scientific research community, and incorporate our findings into the classroom and outreach events. The investigators and graduate students will work with forecasters in the San Diego office of the National Weather Service to both help transition our research findings into operations and to better inform of hazards associated with tropical cyclones. Research findings will also be discussed and expanded upon with the international and national atmospheric community through conferences, workshops, and using the University at Albany Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences Map listserv. Finally, the investigators intend to increase the representation of underrepresented minorities for graduate students studying atmospheric sciences through the American Geophysical Union Bridge Program.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.