University of Alabama in Huntsville Assistant Professor Dr. Xiaomin Chen has received the Banner I. Miller Award from the American Meteorological Society for his study that leads to more realistic forecasts of storm structure.
Chen, an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Earth Science and principal investigator in the Earth System Science Center at UAH, shares the award with his colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hurricane Research Division.
The research highlights how to better represent the turbulent boundary layer — the lowest part of the atmosphere — in NOAA’s next-generation hurricane forecast model, the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS). The model provides improvements in predicting rapid intensification when a hurricane strengthens dramatically over a short time.
“In just a day, a storm can go from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane. Our research gives forecasters a better tool to anticipate that kind of change, and we’ve already seen it help in recent cases,” Chen says.
Chen and his students are now focusing on what happens when a hurricane moves from the ocean to land. While hurricanes weaken once they lose their ocean fuel source, the rate of weakening is not well understood.
“It’s not just about the science of the storm. It’s also about how effectively we can communicate risk to people on the ground, sometimes in Spanish or other languages, so they know what actions to take,” Chen notes.