FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Air-Sea Surface Science First-of-its-kind
observation and modeling of the air-sea interaction before,
during, and after hurricanes VIRGINIA KEY, FL (April 30, 2007) —
Aided by new observations from the Coupled Boundary Layer Air-
Sea Transfer (CBLAST) – Hurricane field program, scientists at
the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science have
helped to develop and test a new, high-resolution computer model
to better understand how air-sea interactions directly affect
hurricane intensity, a factor not yet possible in the current
operational forecast models. The research, which is featured in
the March 2007 issue of the Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society (BAMS), explains that current predictive
models used in forecasting hurricane formation and intensity
have difficulty accurately representing data such as ocean
temperature, surface wind, rain and waves, and pressure and
wind-speed relationships. A new fully coupled atmosphere-wave-
ocean modeling system is capable of f