This summer, I had the privelege of working on research with Dr. Ravela and the ESSG  for nine weeks.  My project focused on natural hazard risk assessment, specifically, the development of a tropical cyclone simulator and coupling it to a storm surge hydrodynamic model in order to adequately predict storm surge heights along the Gulf of Mexico coasts.

Summary: The assessment of climate impacts on geophysical natural hazards such as earthquakes, storms, and floods are an area of significant interest. Tropical cyclones, in particular, are the cause of fatalities as well as millions of dollars in property damage yearly, so accurate risk assessment of these events are of great interest to governments, industries, and communities in areas of vulnerability. A key step in this process is efficaciously downscaled cyclone simulations driven by large-scale climate factors.  Here, we implement a hurricane intensity algorithm that is physically motivated with parameter distributions that can be sampled to simulate intensity variability within a large-scale environment. This algorithm uses a set of coupled ordinary differential equations to predict circular wind speed evolution and an inner core moisture variable, which are important parameters for risk assessment. Additionally, environmental wind shear and ocean coupling are included into the algorithm. This practical intensity simulator has high computational efficiency without using as much power as other currently used models, and therefore can produce results at a faster rate. The hurricane intensity simulator is coupled with a storm surge hydrodynamic model to predict storm surge height distributions, ultimately administering this information to government agencies and emergency management planners to better prepare for these storms.

More Information: Below you will find a link to the poster that was presented at the MIT Summer Research Programs Poster Session, and the abstract is also found below. This abstract was submitted to several conferences, including the Symposium of Undergraduate Research Exploration in the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as the Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium at Rice University.