Dear CEE community,

Please join us this Thursday, October 3 at 3:30 in More Hall room 220 for the environment and water program seminar. This week CEE PhD candidate Jacob Davis will talk about how hurricanes drive waves . 

You can find the fall program here: https://depts.washington.edu/watersem/

Air-deployed wave buoys for hurricane forecast improvements

Jacob Davis

UW CEE

Abstract:

Ocean surface waves are a source of drag between the atmosphere and ocean. This is crucial in hurricanes, where wave-dependent drag is a considerable driver of a storm’s intensity and thus contributes to downstream coastal impacts. Our group measures waves in hurricanes using arrays of free-drifting wave buoys which are deployed from airplanes ahead of a storm. Data from buoys deployed in Hurricanes Ian (2022), Fiona (2022), and Idalia (2023) are used to study wave slope, or the ratio of wave height to wavelength, which has been widely used as an effective metric in the parameterization of wave breaking processes and ocean surface roughness. Results show that: 1) wave slope saturates in the extreme winds found inside hurricanes; and 2) the steepest waves occur where wind and waves are aligned, resulting in a distinct spatial pattern relative to the hurricane’s center. This suggests wave slope is connected to the air-sea drag coefficient in hurricanes, which has been observed to saturate in a similar manner and shares a dependence on wind-wave alignment. Ongoing work seeks to establish a physical connection between wave slope and air-sea drag which can help to inform coupled ocean-atmosphere models for improved forecasts of hurricane impacts.

See you Thursday