Analysis of hurricane monitoring in the Atlantic Basin
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Abstract
Though hurricane monitoring has seen much improvement, assessing the sufficiency of current monitoring strategies is necessary to make proper adaptations. This study aims to find gaps in coverage and areas of insufficient data collection and analyze the bounding box in which satellites are positioned to track hurricanes. This was done by using Python to examine the National Hurricane Center's Best Track HURDAT-2 dataset. The minimum pressure and the maximum wind radii (MWR) are pertinent to assessing a tropical storm's severity. Preliminary results from this study show there are not significant enough variations in these parameters to require alteration of sensor infrastructure. Regarding hurricane tracking, this study concludes that MWR and the bounding box for satellite presence can be improved. The MWR values reflect the damage caused by the cyclone. Evidence suggests that values for the maximum wind radii are not recorded consistently when a hurricane is over land. Though not yet implemented, other studies have determined the area for a bounding box to position low-orbit satellites to best track hurricanes at their inception in the Atlantic warm pool because current tracking is lacking. After analyzing trends over the past decade, we report a smaller bounding box than is currently suggested can be used to monitor hurricanes at their onset sufficiently. If implemented, initial hurricane tracking can be greatly improved and fewer satellites will likely be needed, thus lowering the overall cost. Future work will be required to discover the cause of insufficient wind radii data and make the proper corrections.
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Research project completed at the Department of Aerospace Engineering.