AN ANALYSIS OF THE TROPICAL CYCLONE YASI using a Numerical Weather - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

C LIMATE R ESEARCH IN THE D EPARTMENT OF P HYSICS J. Padovani Ginies & N. Bonnici , M ALTA C LIMATE T EAM 14-19 th March 2011

AN ANALYSIS OF THE TROPICAL CYCLONE YASI using a Numerical Weather Prediction Model, WRF Mr. Jason Padovani Ginies & Mr. Norbert Bonnici

CONTENTS  What is a Tropical Storm?  Yasi Tropical Storm  The Model – WRF  Results 3

WHAT IS A TROPICAL STORM?  Collection of thunderstorms  Low pressure center surrounded by a system of higher pressure.  Catastrophic effects  Winds damaging properties, vehicles and crops.  Extreme weather conditions possibly causing shipwrecks and aviation problems.  Loose debris is also dangerous, being turned to deadly flying projectiles. 4

YASI  26 th January till 3 rd February 2011  Originated from a tropical low near the Fiji islands, moving to northern Queensland 5

YASI  26 th January till 3 rd February 2011  Originated from a tropical low near the Fiji islands, moving to northern Queensland  Reached Category 4 on SSHS scale  Lowest pressure: 929mb  Wind sustains of 215 km/h, gusts of 285 km/h  About $3.5 billion in damages 1  1 Death over the days 6

YASI  26 th January till 3 rd February 2011 26 th January – Tropical Low  Originated from a tropical low near the Fiji islands, moving to northern Queensland 27 th January – Tropical Depression  Reached Category 4 on SSHS scale 30 th January – Tropical Storm  Lowest pressure: 929mb  Wind sustains of 215 km/h, gusts of 285 km/h 31 st February – Severe Tropical Cyclone  About $3.5 billion in damages 1  1 Death over the days 2 nd February – Category 4 7

YASI  26 th January till 3 rd February 2011  Originated from a tropical low near the Fiji islands, moving to northern Queensland  Reached Category 4 on SSHS scale 8

YASI  26 th January till 3 rd February 2011  Originated from a tropical low near the Fiji islands, moving Storm Category Wind Speed to northern Queensland Surge (km/h) (m)  Reached Category 4 on SSHS scale 5 >250 >5.5 4 210-249 4.0-5.5 3 178-209 2.7-3.7 2 154-177 1.8-2.4 1 119-153 1.2-1.5 9

YASI  26 th January till 3 rd February 2011  Originated from a tropical low near the Fiji islands, moving to northern Queensland  Reached Category 4 on SSHS scale  Lowest pressure: 929mb  Wind sustains of 215 km/h, gusts of 285 km/h  About $3.5 billion in damages 1  1 Death over the days 10 1. According to http://www.reuters.com

COMPARISON KATRINA (2005) YASI (2011)  Category 5 on SSHS scale  Category 4 on SSHS scale  Damage: $81.2 billion  Damage: $3.5 billion  At least 1,836 deaths  1 death 11

WRF  Mesoscale Numerical Weather prediction model  Installed on the UoM Computer Cluster – ALBERT  Distributed Computing WRF Operational Weather Forecasting Research 12

NESTING 13

NESTING 14

HOW IT WORKS Pre Post Data Mining Physics Processing Processing 15

DOMAIN USED 16

Yasi OUR RESULTS 17

CLOUD FRACTION 18

SURFACE PRESSURE 19

CONCLUSION  Comparable with storm track  Achieved the eye and a cyclonic system  Experience  WRF  ALBERT  Informative on current events 20

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The MCT is grateful to the following:  PRECIS  Met Office UK, C. Morrell, S. Tucker, D. Hein, D. Hassell  RegCM4  The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, X. Bi  WRF  The WRF community  Department of Physics  C.V. Sammut, L. Zammit Mangion, A. Magro, D. Cutajar  IT Services  A. Zammit, S. Portelli, S. Ancilleri  Data Centres  ESRL, ECMWF, Australian RCS network 21