World meteorological organization ra IV hurricane committee thirty-fifth session
Download 177.42 Kb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- VCP projects
Assistance to NMHS8.5 The Committee took note that:
VCP projects8.6 During 2012, WMO continued providing assistance to NMHSs through the VCP Programme. A total of one request was supported in the region, benefiting Haiti with the assistance of spare parts and expert services for the procurement and installation of meteorological and hydrological observing system infrastructure. A list of VCP projects carried out for 2009 through 2012 related to the Members of RA IV is given in Appendix VI.
9.1 Hurricane Sandy – what we learned from the storm 9.1.1 In view of the wide-spread damage of Hurricane Sandy and its broad range of impact on the warning services as a result of the significant change in its structure, the Committee decided to hold a special session to carry out a in-depth review of the evolution of the storm and to draw lessons from the warning activities of the Committee Members during the entire life of Hurricane Sandy. The Committee took a three-stage approach for the review; i) occurrence in the Caribbean, ii) impact on the USA, and iii) aftermath in Canada through extra-tropical transition. 9.1.2 Mr Glendell de Souza (British Caribbean Territories) agreed to serve as rapporteur on this agenda item. 9.1.3 At the first stage, representing the Caribbean, Dr Jose Rubiera of Cuba presented the development of the storm Sandy over the Caribbean. Sandy occurred as Tropical Depression No.18, formed about 565 kilometres south-southwest of Kingston, Jamaica, on October 22th, and that day it became Tropical Storm Sandy. In the morning of the 24th Sandy reached hurricane strength, crossing over the eastern portion of Jamaica, in the afternoon, where it caused some damage. Sandy continued its rapid intensification and within hours reached Category 3, just before making landfall in the province of Santiago de Cuba, in the early hours of October 25th. The city of Santiago de Cuba was severely affected by winds of up to 185 km/h (115 mph), with a storm surge reaching 2 meters (6.5 ft) high on the coast, with waves up to 9 meters (29.5 ft) high. Nine deaths were reported in Santiago de Cuba and two in the province of Guantanamo, 11 in total. Sandy exited Cuba by the province of Holguin, in the Northern coast, as a Category 2 hurricane at about 6 am, and headed for the Eastern Bahamas, toward the Atlantic. 9.1.4 Dr Richard Knabb of USA discussed the Sandy’s evolution from the Caribbean to USA. Sandy was a classic late-season hurricane in the south-western Caribbean Sea. The cyclone made landfall as a category 1 hurricane (on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) in Jamaica and as a 100-kt category 3 hurricane in eastern Cuba before quickly weakening to a category 1 hurricane while moving through the central and north-western Bahamas. Sandy underwent a complex evolution and grew considerably in size while over the Bahamas, and continued to grow despite weakening into a tropical storm north of those islands. The system re-strengthened into a hurricane while it moved north-eastward, parallel to the coast of the south-eastern United States, and reached a secondary peak intensity of 157 km/h (98 mph) while it turned north-westward toward the Mid-Atlantic States. Sandy weakened somewhat and then made landfall as a post-tropical cyclone near Brigantine, New Jersey with 129 km/h (80 mph) maximum sustained winds. Because of its tremendous size, however, Sandy drove a catastrophic storm surge into the New Jersey and New York coastlines. Preliminary U.S. damage estimates are near $50 billion, making Sandy the second-costliest cyclone to hit the United States since 1900. There were at least 147 direct deaths recorded across the Atlantic basin due to Sandy, with 72 of these fatalities occurring in the mid-Atlantic and north-eastern United States. This is the greatest number of U.S. direct fatalities related to a tropical cyclone outside of the southern states since Hurricane Agnes in 1972. 9.1.5 Mr John Parker of Canada presented Sandy at its last stage, focusing on the extra-tropical transition (ET). ET is a common occurrence in higher latitudes as storms of tropical origins interact with mid-latitude systems. These interactions often contribute to further storm development, supporting existing Tropical Storm or Hurricane-strength, or even enhancing it into a broader and more intense storm. The presentation highlighted the factors Canadian forecasters look for leading to a transitioning storm. In addition, this presentation touched on the domestic coordination activities given the size of the storm, its impacts and the follow up study conducted within the Meteorological Service of Canada with a goal to improve future performance of the prediction system and services. 9.1.6 The Committee was informed that the rainfall experienced in Jamaica from the passage of Hurricane Sandy appeared to be mainly from stratiform clouds. There was little thunderstorm activity associated with the precipitation. However, over Cuba rainfall to the east of the Sandy’s centre was intense and approximately twelve tornadoes touched down to the right of Sandy’s track over central Cuba. Post-event interviews indicated that there was tremendous lightning activity within the eye wall and, according to the United Kingdom Meteorological Office Lightning Network, there was considerable lightning activity far to the east of the centre of Sandy while it was over Cuba. 9.1.7 After exiting Cuba, Sandy’s passage was through the Bahamas and northward along the eastern seaboard of the United States before turning to the northwest towards the coast. At that time, Sandy was undergoing significant thermodynamic changes. The centre then impacted the shores of New Jersey as a post-tropical cyclone with winds of approximately 128 km/h (80 mph). However, due Sandy’s massive size, Bermuda experienced pulses of storm force winds 1155 km (717 miles) away from the centre. Due to its tremendous size, it drove a catastrophic storm surge into the New Jersey and New York coastlines. The highest inundation was about 30 metres (9 feet) in areas bordering New York Harbor and Raritan Bay. 9.1.8 The National Hurricane Center (NHC) engaged the media several days prior to landfall and although the cyclone was officially a hurricane at that time, the forecast indicated that the cyclone would become post-tropical prior to landfall. The media used the information provided by the NHC to label the cyclone with monikers such as “Superstorm Sandy” and “Frankenstorm Sandy.” Eventually, the moniker “Superstorm Sandy” was engraved on the public consciousness, although the cyclone was still officially a hurricane. Sandy eventually became post-tropical two and a half hours before the centre made landfall. 9.1.9 Most of the fatalities caused by Sandy in the United States were due to storm surge and most of the storm surge fatalities were those who were unable or unwilling to vacate their homes despite being ordered to evacuate. Post event reviews indicated that storm surge was not understood by the general public since they equated hurricanes with wind damage. In addition, social scientists stated that the public did not understand whether the storm surge warnings were general or specific to Sandy. To address the lack of understanding of the impacts of storm surge, the National Hurricane Center will produce storm surge warnings for the United States from 2015. 9.1.10 During Sandy’s passage through the Caribbean, the Bahamas and along the east coast of the United States, the size of the circulation proved to be a challenge in the provision of warnings to the public, once the centre of the circulation was some distance past national boundaries. It appears that the public could not believe that Sandy could impact on their country when the centre was so far away. Thus warnings may have been ignored, which could have led to the loss of life. 9.1.11 Although Sandy did not directly impact on Canada as a tropical storm, the circulation’s wind envelope produced a strong northerly wind over Lake Huron because of an analogous blocking high pressure which was centred near Newfoundland. The persistent strong northerly winds generated rough seas on the south-western side of the Lake which caused some downed trees and flooding. 9.1.12 The Canadian Hurricane Centre (CHC) engaged the Emergency Managers and at least five days prior to Sandy’s landfall in New Jersey, thus contributing to the relatively low number of fatalities of two persons. Meteorological personnel were embedded in the Emergency Operation Centres during events like the passage of Sandy to assist the Emergency Mangers in understanding the warnings so that they would be better able to communicate with the public. Major media houses were also engaged in delivering warnings to the public. However, there were times when the message was scrambled as media houses tried to impart their own “spin” on the warnings, through the use of in-house “meteorologists” to produce forecasts. 9.1.13 The Committee was informed that the formation of an in-house Decision Support Services would allow for the dissemination of warnings and forecasts by meteorologists trained in mass communications and this could negate the changing of warnings/forecasts by the media. The view was also expressed that communication experts should be used for low impact events. However, for high impact events, a meteorologist with communication training would be better able to communicate the uncertainty. Furthermore, it was expected that with the introduction of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) in North America, some of the communication problems would be alleviated. 9.1.14 It was noted that within two days after the demise of Sandy, media houses were producing documentaries which tried to link the impacts of Sandy, the analogous high pressure and climate change. However, there was no engagement with National Meteorological Services in the production of the documentaries. 9.1.15 The Committee recommended to Regional Association IV that a comprehensive report be compiled and collated on Sandy in terms of the science and impacts, communications mechanisms (challenges and successes), emergency management and media interactions. The report would be shared with other Regions with tropical cyclone committees. 9.2 Hurricane forecaster competencies 9.2.1 The Committee recalled the decisions of the Sixteenth Session of the World Meteorological Congress that nominated high priority areas such as Disaster Risk Reduction, approval of strategies such as the Service Delivery Strategy and Capacity Development Strategy to assist Members to structure and deliver services and the Congress’s call for the WMO Technical Commissions to develop competencies in their fields of expertise that provide a minimum common set of standards. 9.2.2 The Committee further recalled that the regional tropical cyclone committees in RA I, II and V have set up working groups to propose competencies for tropical cyclone forecasters in their regions. Noting that the safety and welfare of many of the Caribbean and Central America Members were heavily influenced by weather and oceanographic phenomena associated with tropical storms, tropical cyclones and hurricanes, the Committee decided to set up a small Task Team to propose a set of hurricane forecaster competencies for consideration by the next session. The Committee requested that the Task Team circulate the draft competencies two months prior to the next session to allow Members time to consider them for adoption before the session. Noting the existing work already undertaken in this area by WMO Members such as the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the Committee suggested that the Task Team would review these competencies, and the output of the other tropical cyclone committees and experiences from the introduction of the Aeronautical Meteorological Forecaster competencies (particularly assessment options) as a first step in drafting competencies for personnel involved in forecasting and providing meteorological services related to tropical storms, tropical cyclones and hurricanes in this Region. The Committee nominated the Task Team to include: Mr Keithley Meade (Antigua and Barbuda), Dr José Rubiera (Cuba), Mr Juan Carlos Fallas (Costa Rica), a representative from the RTC at CIMH, a representative of the RSMC in Miami and a representative from the Canadian Hurricane Centre. The draft ToR for the Task Tea is given in the Appendix VII. The Committee requested that the work of the Task Team be raised during the 16th session of the Regional Association IV and thus included in the RA-IV work programme and support requirements. 9.2.3 In taking this step, the Committee noted that such an approach would assist Members to:
9.2.4 The Committee acknowledged that whilst there were many advantages to developing and implementing a common competency approach, each Member would need to deal with issues such as gaining staff support for this approach, juggling tight budgets and rosters to provide time for training and assessment, dealing with staff who were assessed “as not yet competent” and in some cases gaining further resources from governments to allow them to meet the minimum standards. The Committee noted that the purpose of considering the development of tropical storm / tropical cyclone / hurricane forecaster competencies was to improve the services provided by the NMHS in the region, make the best use of the limited education and training resources and to minimize staff overload in training. The Committee emphasized the need for this to be a “light touch” and remain under control of the Committee. 9.2.5 In parallel with the development of the draft competencies, the Committee requested its Members to provide the Task Team with the information outlined in Appendix VIII to assist the Task Team scope out the size and breadth of the regional education and training requirements. This information could also assist groups such as the US National Weather Service in focusing their limited education and training resources to help achieve the best regional outcome. The Committee acknowledged and agreed that the Task Team may need to refine these questions before distributing to the Members. 9.3 Implementation of Tropical Cyclone Advisories in graphical format 9.3.1 An overview was provided by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to the Committee of the requirements of international air navigation for information on the current and forecast position (and horizontal and vertical extent) of tropical cyclones, issued by the Tropical Cyclone Advisory Centres (TCACs) in the form of TC advisory information (ICAO Annex 3, and WMO Technical Regulations [C.3.1], Chapter 3.7 and Appendix 2 refer). The Committee was reminded that Amendment 75 to Annex 3/Technical Regulations [C.3.1] (applicable November 2010) had introduced a recommendation with respect to the issuance of TC advisory information in a graphical format (specifically binary universal form for the representation of meteorological data (BUFR) code form or portable network graphic (PNG) chart form), complementing the existing text-based TC advisory. 9.3.2 At present, TCAC Miami has indicated that it is not in a position to issue graphical TC advisory information in keeping with the ICAO recommendation (specifically in PNG chart form). However, due to severe restrictions that TCAC Miami have experienced, they expressed their intention to implement the PNG chart form probably during 2014 and promised to work closely with ICAO to seek the assistance of NOAA’s National Weather Service, Aviation Weather Centre in the development of this new product. 10. SCIENTIFIC LECTURE 10.1 The following scientific lectures were presented during the session. Abstracts of the lectures are given in Appendix IX.
- Dr Richard Knabb (NOAA/NHC, USA)
- Dr Richard Swinbank (UK Met Office)
- Dr Richard Swinbank (UK Met Office) 11. DATE AND PLACE OF THE THIRTY-SIXTH SESSION The Committee was informed that xxxxxxxx would consider hosting the thirty-sixth session of the RA IV Hurricane Committee in 2014. 12. CLOSURE OF THE SESSION The report of the thirty-fifth session of the Committee was adopted at its final meeting at xxxxxx hours on 12 April 2013. _____________________ Directory: pages -> prog -> www -> tcp -> documents documents -> Review of the ra IV hurricane operational plan documents -> Cyclone programme documents -> World meteorological organization technical document documents -> World meteorological organization ra IV hurricane committee thirty-fourth session documents -> World meteorological organization ra IV hurricane committee thirty-third session documents -> Review of the past hurricane season documents -> Ra IV hurricane committee thirty-fourth session ponte vedra beach, fl, usa documents -> World meteorological organization ra IV hurricane committee thirty-second session documents -> English only review of the tropical cyclone operational plan for the south pacific and south-east indian ocean documents -> Global tropical cyclone season Download 177.42 Kb. Share with your friends:
|