Project Team
Students
Mary Bennett
Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Penn State Berks
Faculty Mentors
Xingchao Chen
University Park
Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Eugene E. Clothiaux
University Park
Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Project
Project Video
Project Abstract
Tropical cyclones are some of the most dangerous and costly weather phenomena encountered. While the life cycles of tropical cyclones are increasingly understood once they develop, gains in understanding cyclogenesis have been harder to come by. Why some lows develop into tropical cyclones and why others do not remains an active area of research. One reason for slow progress on this front is sparseness of atmospheric data over the open oceans. Today, brightness temperature (BT) data acquired from satellites provide some of our best looks at tropical cyclone formation. In order to examine tropical cyclogenesis, BT maps of the Atlantic Basin during the 2017 hurricane season were first created. A second set of maps focused on the genesis of Hurricane Jose in September of 2017. By using the hurricane best track dataset called HURDAT-2, the formation of Jose was found to begin on September 4th, 2017. Analyzing the BT maps in conjunction with underlying weather data leading up to Jose’s formation will be the first step in understanding why the precursor storm to Jose developed into a tropical cyclone. In the future, many of the disturbances coming off the coast of West Africa will be identified and characterized as either developing or not into a tropical cyclone. The goal will then be to determine the atmospheric features that lead some of these storms to develop into tropical cyclones. Understanding the differences between a disturbance that develops into a tropical cyclone and a disturbance that does not is key to improving understanding of tropical cyclogenesis. More research into the BT maps and their underlying weather data for these storms is required to better understand tropical cyclogenesis in the future.
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