Even before Hurricanes Irma and Maria ravaged the Caribbean recently, experts at The City College of New York were gaining insight into how storms develop and intensify in the region. A $174,895 grant from the National Science Foundation promises to boost this research.
The one-year funding to a team of NOAA CREST researchers in the Grove School of Engineering is entitled "RAPID: Impacts of Post-Hurricane Land-Atmosphere Interactions on Convective and Precipitation Processes in the Caribbean Region."
"The primary goal of this study is to improve our understanding of the role played by modified land-atmosphere interactions in storm development and intensification in the Caribbean region," said Prathap Ramamurthy, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and the project's director.
Ramamurthy and his co-PIs, Jorge E. Gonzalez?, Fred Moshary and post-doctoral fellow Nathan Hossanah, who are all affiliated with City College's NOAA-CREST, have been conducting summer field studies in Puerto Rico for the past three years, which have vastly improved their knowledge of convection in the Caribbean.
"The recent hurricane provides us a rare opportunity to study how convection and precipitation will be impacted in a landscape that is impacted by hurricane," noted Ramamurthy. "As part of this study we will be visiting PR frequently in the next year to make key observations of land cover change and its impact on convective processes."
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