How a UH professor is improving hurricane forecasting

Hurricanes are destructive storms that meteorologist have challenges forecasting.

Despite the unique challenges these storms create, research scientists at the University of Houston are making strides in improving hurricane intensity forecasting.

Dr. Mostafa Momen is an assistant professor at the University of Houston. He ran several simulations on Hurricanes that already occurred, such as Harvey, Irma, and Katrina. He compared his simulations to the current models and found that his simulations performed up to 40% better in predicting the intensity of the storm.

So, what made the big difference? Dr. Momen says friction. Current models account for too much friction, while Momen’s reduced it.

“My hypothesis was that if we reduce this diffusion or turbulence or friction in hurricanes, whether it is going to impact the intensity forecasts of these hurricanes. And we actually noticed we reduced that, and we noticed that the intensity of hurricanes increased, and they match better with the observations,” Momen said.

His research also looked at precipitation.

“Harvey caused a lot of damage just because of their induced floods. That’s why we worked on this research. We wanted to see whether these improvements that we are making with intensity has any implication on the induced floods and stream flows, how they are impacting the rivers stages and the runoff over cities and over urban areas,” he added.

His simulations found precipitation becomes more localized and intense, but the total rainfall may not increase.

The better the forecast technology becomes the better emergency managers can make decisions for evacuation and other storm preparations.