We usually think of the dangers of hurricanes being from wind and waves, but globally, rainfall and inland flooding from tropical cyclones is a bigger killer. I have been working to better understand the role of tropical cyclones in regional and local flooding and to predict how associated risks might change in the future. I have been using a range of tools to do so, including remotely-sensed rainfall, high resolution hydrologic models, historical archives of hurricane and tropical storm tracks, and in conjunction with climate and weather experts at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, regional climate models.
The ultimate goal is to develop a tool for simulating tropical cyclone rainfall using a combination of rainfall datasets, historical hurricane track locations, and climate model results.
For more information, you can contact me or check the following papers:
- Wright, Daniel B., Thomas R. Knutson, and James A. Smith. “Regionalclimate model projections of rainfall from US landfalling tropicalcyclones.”Climate Dynamics (2015): 1-15.
- Wright, D.B., J.A. Smith, M.L. Baeck. “FloodFrequency Analysis Using Radar Rainfall Fields and StochasticStormTransposition,” Water Resources Research, 50 (1592-1615), 2014.