Any realistic assessment of the impacts of future climatic changes on the Gulf coast region must take into consideration the effects of global warming on hurricane activity. It has been hypothesized that the hazard of wildfire increases significantly after an intense hurricane strike. However, the lack of longterm records on intense hurricane landfalls and major wildfires has prevented a vigoro...

In some geographic areas the most significant cause of variation in total dollar losses are fortuitous, non-hurricane storms. Many of the models developed to address the issue of such excess wind losses use dollar loss data only. The traditional models may muddy the distinction between large loss procedures and excess wind models, particularly in territorial analysis. Additionally, as new model...

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the US Gulf Coast, causing catastrophic damage to communities and the medical infrastructure throughout the lower half of Mississippi. Substantial power outages, widespread communication failures, and a sustained medical surge of patients provided a unique challenge for the medical care delivery system in Mississippi for weeks after the hur...

Focusing on dynamical and thermodynamical processes germane to the hurricane’s core region, this research aims to obtain a more complete understanding of key atmospheric processes governing hurricane structure and intensity. This year (beginning May 2002) we have continued our work on the moist dynamics of the hurricane eye/eyewall and the dry dynamics of a hurricane-like vortex in vertical she...

The topic of tropical cyclone-ocean interaction has received increased attention in the tropical meteorology community over the past several years. It is widely recognized that the major energy source for tropical cyclones is the evaporation from the ocean. The sea surface temperature (SST) is a crucial parameter in this process. A negative feedback mechanism in the tropical cyclone-ocean syste...

sphere–wave–ocean modeling system that is capable of resolving the eye and eyewall at ~1-km grid resolution, which is consistent with a key recommendation for the next-generation hurricane-prediction models by the NOAA Science Advisor Board Hurricane Intensity Research Working Group. It is also the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) plan for the new Hurricane Weather Research ...

The long-term goals and objectives of this research are to develop a more complete physical understanding of tropical cyclone (TC) intensity change processes. This year’s work focused on the following three areas: Determining the three-dimensional asymmetric dynamics of the TC core region; Testing hurricane maximum intensity theory; Analyzing the environmental influences on the intensification ...

We present measurements of aerosols acquired with a differential mobility analyzer – condensation particle counter (DMA-CPC) system aboard a P-3 flight from Miami, FL to Bermuda during Hurricane Erika in 1997. We have analyzed particle number densities as a function of particle diameter, wind speed, and distance from the eye of the hurricane. Our results indicate that particles with diameters l...

Following Hurricane Katrina and the parade of storms that affected the conterminous United States in 2004–2005, the apparent recent increase in intense hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin, and the reported increases in recent decades in some hurricane intensity and duration measures in several basins have received considerable attention. An important ongoing avenue of investigation in the ...

OBJECTIVES Natural disasters may increase risk for a broad range of psychiatric disorders, both in the short- and in the medium-term. We sought to determine the prevalence and longitudinal course of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder (PD), depression, and suicidality in the first 18 months after Hurricane Ike. METHODS Six hundred fifty-eig...