NOAA names Ginis 2002 Environmental HeroThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has given Isaac Ginis, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Oceanography, the NOAA Environmental Hero Award for 2002.
This prestigious national award, presented to individuals and organizations throughout the United States for their efforts to preserve and protect the environment, recognizes Ginis’s contributions in the field of hurricane forecast research. He was nominated for the award by colleagues at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, N.J.
Ginis and his Narragansett Bay Campus colleagues, including physical oceanographer Lewis Rothstein, developed a computer model that predicts the intensity of hurricanes. This model was then coupled with the GFDL model that predicts the track of a hurricane. The coupled model now provides a more efficient set of predictors that take into consideration the effects of atmosphere-ocean interactions during storms and results in more accurate predictions of storm intensity. Last year, the coupled model became an operational part of NOAA’s suite of tools used to more accurately forecast hurricanes.
“I am delighted by NOAA’s recognition of our research efforts in developing a new hurricane forecast computer model,” said Ginis. “It is not very often results of fundamental research translate so directly into saving lives and property as in this case. The United States is more vulnerable to hurricanes than at any time in its history. I hope our computer model will help to more accurately forecast where a hurricane will strike and, thus, more precisely estimate the coastal zones that should be evacuated.”
This is the first operational model in the world to include the two-way effects of a hurricane on the underlying ocean and the effects of the underlying ocean on the hurricane. While at GFDL several years ago, Ginis demonstrated the importance of the interaction of the ocean below a tropical cyclone on tropical storm intensity. This was the most physically realistic simulation performed to date using both a high-resolution ocean model together with a state-of-the-art, three-dimensional hurricane model.
“Professor Ginis has made outstanding contributions to the study of hurricanes by showing how the ocean and atmosphere combine to determine the strength and motion of these dangerous storms,” said GSO Dean David Farmer. “He has tackled the difficult problem of developing computer simulations of hurricanes and his work has led to better predictions, to the lasting benefit of all those affected by their passage.”
More recently his group, in collaboration with GFDL, has demonstrated the potential for improved hurricane intensity prediction on real cases. During the past several years, Ginis and his group have run the coupled GFDL forecast system in semi-operational mode in the Atlantic Basin demonstrating that it can be applied practically in every-day forecasting.
By Lisa Cugini
|
