August- September NSF NOAA NRL NCAR UW UM 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, Monterey, CA, 27 April 2006
Shuyi ChenR. Houze Wen-Chau LeeJim Moore
KatrinaOpheliaRita Hurricanes investigated in RAINEX
Motivation for RAINEX Understanding Rapid Intensity Changes
Cat 2 Cat 3 Cat 5 Cat 4 Day Famous Rapidly Intensifing Storm Hurricane Opal (1995) Pressure drop How do interactions of eyewalls & rainbands in the mature storm… … lead to intensity changes like these? rainband Intensity change problem:
RAINEX Flight Coordination ELDORA radar
Plan--target dropsondes and Doppler
Katrina
Katrina-28 August NRL convective upwind stratiform downwind Atlas et al. ‘ 63
Katrina-28 August ELDORA data Ref Vel Barnes et al. ‘ 83 NRL
Katrina-28 August Confirms “ Barnes ” structure
Rita
RAINEX Flights in Hurricane Rita
Rita- 21 September Intensifying to Cat. 5
0 ºC Rita- 21 September Intensifying to Cat. 5
Dropsondes EyeEyewall Rita- 21 September Intensifying to Cat. 5
Rita- 22 September-Concentric Eyewalls
ELDORA compositeKossin et al vorticity Rita- 22 September-Concentric Eyewalls
Dropsonde in the “ moat ” region 1802 UTC 22 September ‘05 Rita- 22 September-Concentric Eyewalls
Rita- 23 September-Sheared Shear Rogers et al. ‘ 03
Ophelia
A B Ophelia-9 September-Dry Midlevel Inflow B A Dry air Ref Vel
Data Availability
CONCLUSIONS RAINEX Notables: 3 hurricanes—Katrina, Ophelia, & Rita Innovative satellite-based flight control First use of ELDORA in a hurricane Data available via NCAR Field Catalog Katrina and Rita details: K & R’s spiral rainbands had Atlas & Barnes structures R sampled in 3 stages: rapid int., 2nd eyewall, shear Echo cores in eyewalls were linear & oblique Moat region had eye-like sounding Dry air entered in subsiding mesoscale midlevel inflows KatrinaOpheliaRita
Thanks