Tropical Cyclones: Current Characteristics and Potential Changes Under a Warmer Climate

Expected Results

One of the most important aspects of the proposed project constitutes the integration of a network of scientists interested in the problem of development and evolution of tropical cyclones, in countries where cyclones in the past have caused extensive damage. To the best of our knowledge, there hasn’t been a similar network in this topic, relevant not only from the scientific improvements in our understanding but also because tropical cyclones constitute a potential threat to all the countries involved. As it is proposed here, the network will include:

Instituto de Meteorologia (INSMET, Cuba), Centro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, (UNAM), Instituto Mexicano de Tecnología del Agua (IMTA) and Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educacion Superior de Ensenada, (CICESE) (all 3 in Mexico), New Mexico Institute for Mining and Technology (USA) and Centro de Investigaciones Geofísicas (CIGEFI) at the University of Costa Rica.

Nevertheless, if this project is successful, a larger network is envisioned in the medium term future.

Annual workshops in the second and third years of the project will be carried out to discuss the progress of the different aspects of the study, as well as sharing the results with other participants in TCSP/IFEX not associated with this proposal. A report will be prepared after each of the workshops, including the presentations by the different participants and distributed among them, as well as made available to outside interested parties upon request.

A novel contribution from this project will be the establishment of a summer school held in Mexico for technicians and meteorologists from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, with invited experts from different countries.

We consider that this school will fill an important need in improving the knowledge of personnel and students working in the area of tropical cyclones.

Materials relevant to the lectures will be distributed to the participating students during the summer school, but will be prepared during the first year of the project.

Another expected result is the participation of four graduate students and two post-doctoral fellows in the project, allowing the incorporation of young scientist from the four countries in a field that clearly needs the involvement of trained personnel to face the challenges that forecasting cyclone trajectories and intensification represent. All students and post-docs are expected to participate in the workshops and the summer school.

An additional goal that will be achieved during this project will be to develop a sense of what more needs to be learned from detailed in situ observations of tropical cyclones, thus leading to a better design for a future collaborative field program. The network established during this project would be involved in the future field program, enabling first participation of scientists from Cuba, Mexico and Costa Rica in a field project to determine cyclone characteristics in the Eastern Pacific.

Finally, we expect that the results from this project will lead to a number of presentations at scientific meetings and publications in refereed international journals.