{"id":14330,"date":"2022-04-05T21:58:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T21:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/?p=14330"},"modified":"2022-04-07T18:57:05","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T18:57:05","slug":"research-to-application-uw-hurricane-model-gets-upgrade-in-time-for-2022-hurricane-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/articles\/14330","title":{"rendered":"Research to application \u2014 UW hurricane model gets upgrade in time for 2022 hurricane season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season approaching in June, forecasters at the NOAA National Hurricane Center are preparing to track and predict if, and where, storms will make landfall. They rely on a variety of tools to issue advanced warnings that aid emergency planners who may issue evacuation orders to the public. The goal is to save lives and property with these advanced warnings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, a well-established, satellite-based method for determining tropical cyclone intensity, known as the Advanced Dvorak Technique<\/a>, is receiving a significant upgrade within NOAA operations in time for the 2022 Atlantic season. Developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies<\/a>, the ADT has benefitted over the decades from user feedback, especially from forecasters who rely on it to deliver more rapid and accurate analysis of storm development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Three concurrent Atlantic hurricanes captured by geostationary weather satellite GOES-East on Sept. 8, 2017. Hurricanes Katia, Irma and Jose were among several destructive storms that year which devastated parts of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and the US. The Advanced Dvorak Technique, developed by CIMSS researchers, allows forecasters to rapidly determine tropical cyclone intensity, giving advanced warnings of storm potential and aiding emergency planning. Credit: Rick Kohrs<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor us the goal is to provide a tool so forecasters can do their jobs better,\u201d says CIMSS Researcher Tim Olander. \u201cWe have always tried to support them by incorporating their recommendations and ideas for improving our algorithms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original Dvorak Technique was first introduced in the early 1970s by NOAA Researcher Vernon Dvorak as a method to estimate hurricane intensity by analyzing visible and infrared satellite images of a storm. It was a labor-intensive process requiring manual interpretation and comparisons of images over time to detect common patterns, such as the intensity of the convection, cohesiveness of cloud bands and the development of the hurricane center, or \u201ceye.\u201d These estimates could take up to 20 minutes to construct by hand and proved to be less accurate when the hurricane lacked a well-defined eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, advances in satellite meteorology have revolutionized the field, enabling forecasters to see hurricanes as they travel across the Atlantic Ocean or other tropical bodies of water. Weather satellites like NOAA\u2019s GOES-16 capture visible and infrared imagery of a storm every 30 seconds. The increased frequency of the images, combined with modern computing and analysis techniques, has enhanced the accuracy of the Dvorak Technique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CIMSS researchers took advantage of emerging satellite capabilities and developed the ADT in the late 1990s, building on Dvorak\u2019s earlier methods. Use of the ADT has expanded beyond the NHC and it is now used to analyze tropical cyclones around the world, including those form in waters around Australia, Japan, India and Hawaii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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