The life cycle of Hurricane Katrina (2005) was simulated using three different modeling systems of Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) mesoscale model. These are, HWRF (Hurricane WRF) designed specifically for hurricane studies and WRF model with two different dynamic cores as the Advanced Research WRF (ARW) model and the Non-hydrostatic Mesoscale Model (NMM). The WRF model was developed and...

As the world population grows, recent climatic changes seem to bring powerful storms to populated areas. The impact of these storms on utility services is devastating. Hurricane Sandy is a recent example of the enormous damages that storms can inflict on infrastructure, society, and the economy. Quick response to these emergencies represents a big challenge to electric power utilities. Traditio...

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most expensive and devastating natural disasters in American history. Over half a million people were affected by the hurricane, and the US energy infrastructure was severely damaged. In fact, parts of the Gulf are still recovering from Hurricane Katrina to this day. Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters clearly show the need for improvements in crisis m...

Hurricanes are well known to cause considerable amount of damage in the Caribbean, a region that is highly susceptible to these phenomena and largely consists of small island developing economies. However, data constraints have limited the quantification of the damage to only very sparse and rough figures. In this paper we set out to quantify the economic damage due to hurricane strikes in the ...

During hurricane events, large stress cycles from the non-stationary wind and dynamic vehicle loads could possibly induce damage initiations and propagations. Utilizing the non-stationary wind field modeling techniques and the recent developed vehicle-bridge-wind dynamic analysis framework, this paper initiates the bridge fatigue damage assessment of bridges under vehicle and non-stationary ext...

Recent, global mass-mortalities of reef corals due to record warm sea temperatures have led researchers to consider global warming as one of the most significant threats to the persistence of coral reef ecosystems. The passage of a hurricane can alleviate thermal stress on coral reefs, highlighting the potential for hurricane-associated cooling to mitigate climate change impacts. We provide evi...

A previous study of Hurricane Katrina survivors found that higher levels of predisaster social support were associated with lower psychological distress one year after the storm, and that this pathway was mediated by lower exposure to hurricane-related stressors. As a follow-up, we examined the impact of pre- and postdisaster social support on longer-term of mental health-both psychological dis...

Retrospective predictions of seasonal hurricane activity in the Atlantic and east Pacific are generated using an atmospheric model with 50-km horizontal resolution by simply persisting sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies from June through the hurricane season. Using an ensemble of 5 realizations for each year between 1982 and 2008, the correlations of the model mean predictions with observa...

On 11 September 1992, Hurricane Iniki struck koa forests we had studied along an elevation gradient (500 to 1300 m) on western Kaua'i. The hurricane decreased canopy leaf area by 29 to 80 percent, and damage was proportional to pre-hurricane leaf area and canopy height. At some sites, phyllodes were stripped from intact branches, leaving the canopy otherwise intact. At other sites, many large b...

[1] Hurricanes mix and cool the upper ocean, as shown here in observations and modeling of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico during the passage of hurricane Wilma. Curiously, the upper ocean around the Loop Current warmed prior to Wilma’s entrance into the Gulf. The major cause was increased volume and heat transports through the Yucatan Channel produced by storm-induced convergences in ...