EAGER: Progressive Derecho Initiation and Propagation in Specific Physical Corridors as Determined by Mesoscale D-PSI Vectors

巨回声是大气中最具破坏性的现象之一。这些风暴与快速移动，大规模和不断增长的雷暴群有关，这些雷暴可以持续10个小时或更长时间，传播范围超过600英里。它们通常伴随着时速超过65英里的阵风，以及破坏性的闪电、洪水、大冰雹，甚至是小型龙卷风。它们对农业、交通和城市安全产生不利影响。最近，美国中西部地区的一场龙卷风造成了超过110亿美元的财产损失，几人因风速超过140英里/小时而死亡。目前，我们不能经常预测最具破坏性的脱回声的强度、位置和持续时间，也不能始终提前几个小时区分强弱脱回声。该项目将在科学理论和计算机可视化的基础上创造新的技术，以提高对这种破坏性现象的预测。这项新技术将以计算机生成预测最有可能产生回波的大气条件的形式提供给政府和私人天气预报员。这将有可能比我们目前所能做的提前更准确地预测退回声，从而挽救生命并减少财产损失。目前，对脱回声的计算机预测由于缺乏对脱回声发生和运动的前体物理环境的适当综合而受到影响。将要采取的研究方法比以前综合了更多可能造成持久和破坏性后果的物理条件。构成脱回声的强雷暴的更大规模组织是急流和独特的大气锋面系统的结果，这些系统最有可能在极端热浪期间发生。待测试的理论代表了一种独特的综合物理过程，以前没有应用于业务或研究环境中的回波。此外，这些物理的复杂性需要创新的四维计算机可视化技术，以便业务天气预报员能够理解许多非线性过程，这些过程必须适当地相位才能产生回波。目标是大大提高预报员对有利的脱回波环境的可操作计算流体模型综合预测的可靠性，从而延长公众对这些破坏性风暴预警的提前时间。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

Derechos are one of the atmosphere’s most destructive phenomena. These windstorms are associated with a rapidly moving, massive and growing group of thunderstorms that can last for 10 or more hours and travel well over 600 miles. They are typically accompanied by wind gusts of more than 65 mph as well as damaging lightning, flooding rain, large hail, and even small tornados. They adversely impact agriculture, transportation, and urban safety. A recent derecho in the midwestern U.S. resulted in more than 11 billion dollars of property damage and several fatalities from wind gusts greater than 140 mph. Presently, we do not often predict the intensity, location, and duration of the most devastating derechos nor do we consistently differentiate between the strong and weak derechos only hours in advance. This project will create new technology based on scientific theories and computer visualizations in 4 dimensions to improve the prediction of this damaging phenomenon. The new technology will be available to operational government and private weather forecasters in the form of computer-generated predictions of the atmospheric conditions that are most likely to create derechos. This will potentially enable more accurate prediction of derechos farther in advance than we presently can do thus saving lives and reducing property damage.Presently, operational computer predictions of derechos suffer from a lack of proper synthesis of the precursor physical environment to derecho genesis and motion. The research approach to be undertaken synthesizes many more of the physical conditions that are likely to create long lasting and devastating derechos than has been done before. The larger scale organization of the strong thunderstorms that comprise derechos is the result of the jet stream and unique atmospheric frontal systems that are most likely to occur during extreme heat waves. The theory to be tested represents a unique synthesis of physical processes not previously applied to derechos in either the operational or research environments. Also, the complexity of these physics requires innovative 4-dimensional computer visualization techniques so that operational weather forecasters can understand the many nonlinear processes that have to properly phase to produce derechos. The goal is to substantially improve the reliability of the synthesis of operational computational fluid model predictions of a favorable derecho environment for forecasters and thus extend for the public the lead time of warnings of these devastating windstorms.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.