Papers by Frank D Marks - NOAA Federal
From Technology Demonstration to Science Mission: MicroMAS-2 and TROPICS
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2018
New Science Enabled by the NASA TROPICS CubeSat Constellation Mission
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2017
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2020
Unique Observations in Hurricane Maria (2017) using the Coyote Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS)
CubeSats and NanoSats for Remote Sensing II, 2018
Recent technology advances in miniature microwave radiometers that can be hosted on very small sa... more Recent technology advances in miniature microwave radiometers that can be hosted on very small satellites have made possible a new class of constellation missions that provide very high revisit rates of tropical cyclones and other severe weather. The Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission was selected by NASA as part of the Earth Venture-Instrument (EVI-3) program and is now in development with planned launch readiness in late 2019. The overarching goal for TROPICS is to provide nearly all-weather observations of 3-D temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high-value science investigations of tropical cyclones (TCs), including: (1) relationships of rapidly evolving precipitation and upper cloud structures to upper-level warm-core intensity and associated storm intensity changes; (2) evolution (including diurnal variability) of precipitation structure and storm intensification in relationship to environmental humidity fields; and (3) the impact of rapid-update observations on numerical and statistical intensity forecasts of tropical cyclones.
Finally, some hindrances to progress in hurricane landfall research are listed in section 9. Some... more Finally, some hindrances to progress in hurricane landfall research are listed in section 9. Some of these hindrances are related to establishing better linkages between the research community and the NCEP and original data sources. Ongoing problems such as inadequate computing resources and deficiencies in observations need to be addressed, along with assuring that all existing observations are communicated to the analysis and forecast centers. 1.
Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 2021
This study investigates the precipitation symmetrization preceding rapid intensification (RI) of ... more This study investigates the precipitation symmetrization preceding rapid intensification (RI) of tropical cyclones (TCs) experiencing vertical wind shear by analyzing numerical simulations of Typhoon Mujigae (2015) with warm (CTL) and relatively cool (S1) sea surface temperatures (SSTs). A novel finding is that precipitation symmetrization is maintained by the continuous development of deep convection along the inward flank of a convective precipitation shield (CPS), especially in the downwind part. Beneath the CPS, downdrafts flush the boundary layer with low-entropy parcels. These low-entropy parcels do not necessarily weaken the TCs; instead, they are “recycled” in the TC circulation, gradually recovered by positive enthalpy fluxes, and develop into convection during their propagation toward a downshear convergence zone. Along-trajectory vertical momentum budget analyses reveal the predominant role of buoyancy acceleration in the convective development in both experiments. The bo...
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2020
Tropical cyclones (TCs) are among the most destructive natural phenomena with huge societal and e... more Tropical cyclones (TCs) are among the most destructive natural phenomena with huge societal and economic impact. They form and evolve as the result of complex multiscale processes and nonlinear interactions. Even today the understanding and modeling of these processes is still lacking. A major goal of NASA is to bring the wealth of satellite and airborne observations to bear on addressing the unresolved scientific questions and improving our forecast models. Despite their significant amount, these observations are still underutilized in hurricane research and operations due to the complexity associated with finding and bringing together semicoincident and semicontemporaneous multiparameter data that are needed to describe the multiscale TC processes. Such data are traditionally archived in different formats, with different spatiotemporal resolution, across multiple databases, and hosted by various agencies. To address this shortcoming, NASA supported the development of the Jet Propu...
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2019
Unique data from seven flights of the Coyote small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) were collected... more Unique data from seven flights of the Coyote small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) were collected in Hurricanes Maria (2017) and Michael (2018). Using NOAA’s P-3 reconnaissance aircraft as a deployment vehicle, the sUAS collected high-frequency (>1 Hz) measurements in the turbulent boundary layer of hurricane eyewalls, including measurements of wind speed, wind direction, pressure, temperature, moisture, and sea surface temperature, which are valuable for advancing knowledge of hurricane structure and the process of hurricane intensification. This study presents an overview of the sUAS system and preliminary analyses that were enabled by these unique data. Among the most notable results are measurements of turbulence kinetic energy and momentum flux for the first time at low levels (<150 m) in a hurricane eyewall. At higher altitudes and lower wind speeds, where data were collected from previous flights of the NOAA P-3, the Coyote sUAS momentum flux values are encouragingly si...
Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 2018
The Time‐Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellatio... more The Time‐Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission was selected by NASA as part of the Earth Venture‐Instrument (EVI‐3) program. The overarching goal for TROPICS is to provide nearly all‐weather observations of 3D temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high‐value science investigations of tropical cyclones. TROPICS will provide rapid‐refresh microwave measurements (median refresh rate better than 60 min for the baseline mission) which can be used to observe the thermodynamics of the troposphere and precipitation structure for storm systems at the mesoscale and synoptic scale over the entire storm life cycle. TROPICS comprises six CubeSats in three low‐Earth orbital planes. Each CubeSat will host a high‐performance radiometer to provide temperature profiles using seven channels near the 118.75 GHz oxygen absorption line,...
Development of the AOML Hurricane Research System
NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) has committed to the devel... more NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) has committed to the development of a modeling and data-assimilation system recently. This Hurricane Research System (HRS) aims to improve hurricane forecast by developing innovative modeling techniques, and by assimilating the hurricane inner-core data that is timely collected with aircrafts by the scientists at the AOML Hurricane Research Division (HRD), in addition to the data collected by other channels. We have started the development of the HRS by implementing a moving nest within a regional domain on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model (NMM). The dynamically moving nest is used to track the hurricane with an enhanced resolution to better simulate the hurricane structure with more accurate dynamical and physical processes. Combining with the diagnostic expertise at the HRD, and benefiting from the community efforts, we have quickly composed the HRS with excellent ingred...
Weather and Forecasting, 2015
The Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting Model (HWRF) was operationally implemented with a ... more The Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting Model (HWRF) was operationally implemented with a 27-km outer domain and a 9-km moving nest in 2007 (H007) as a tropical cyclone forecast model for the North Atlantic and eastern Pacific hurricane basins. During the 2012 hurricane season, a modified version of HWRF (H212), which increased horizontal resolution by adding a third (3 km) nest within the 9-km nest, replaced H007. H212 thus became the first operational model running at convection-permitting resolution. In addition, there were modifications to the initialization, model physics, tracking algorithm, etc. This paper compares H212 hindcast forecasts for the 2010–11 Atlantic hurricane seasons with forecasts from H007 and H3GP, a triply nested research version of HWRF. H212 reduced track forecast errors for almost all forecast times versus H007 and H3GP. H3GP was superior for intensity forecasts, although H212 showed some improvement over H007. Stratifying the cases by initial vert...
Analysis of forecast errors of high-resolution hurricane forecast using the ensemble data assimilation system
The Hurricane Ensemble Data Assimilation System (HEDAS) was developed at the Hurricane Research D... more The Hurricane Ensemble Data Assimilation System (HEDAS) was developed at the Hurricane Research Division (HRD) of NOAA using an experimental version of the Hurricane Weather and Research Forecast model (HWRFx). This system was designed for research on improving the hurricane intensity forecast by dynamic assimilation of airborne observations into the vortex scale high-resolution forecast system. The results of case studies
Monitoring and Modeling the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A Record-Breaking Enterprise, 2011
At the time of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, the Loop Current (LC), a warm ocean curre... more At the time of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, the Loop Current (LC), a warm ocean current in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), extended to 27.5°N just south of the rig. To measure the regional scale variability of the LC, oceanographic missions were flown on a NOAA WP-3D research aircraft to obtain ocean structural data during the spill and provide thermal structure profiles to ocean forecasters aiding in the oil spill disaster at 7 to 10 day intervals. The aircraft flew nine grid patterns over the eastern GoM between May and July 2010 deploying profilers to measure atmospheric and oceanic properties such as wind, humidity, temperature, salinity, and current. Ocean current profilers sampled as deep as 1500 m, conductivity, temperature, and depth profilers sampled to 1000 m, and bathythermographs sampled to either 350 or 800 m providing deep structural measurements. Profiler data were provided to modeling centers to predict possible trajectories of the oil and vector ships to regions of anomalous signals. In hindcast mode, assimilation of temperature profiles into the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model improved the fidelity of the simulations by reducing RMS errors by as much as 30% and decreasing model biases by half relative to the simulated thermal structure from models that assimilated only satellite data. The synoptic snapshots also provided insight into the evolving LC variability, captured the shedding of the warm core eddy Franklin, and measured the small-scale cyclones along the LC periphery.
Nexrad-In-Space - A Geostationary Satellite Doppler Weather Radar for Hurricane Studies
The Nexrad-In-Space (NIS) is a revolutionary atmospheric radar observation concept from the geost... more The Nexrad-In-Space (NIS) is a revolutionary atmospheric radar observation concept from the geostationary orbiting platform. It was developed over the last 4 years under the auspices of NASA's Earth Science Instrument Incubator Program (IIP). The NIS radar would provide Ka-band (35 GHz) reflectivity and line-of-sight Doppler velocity profiles over a circular Earth region of approximately 5200 km in diameter with
Weather and Forecasting, 2004
The NOAA/NWS/NCEP/Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center has sought techniques that... more The NOAA/NWS/NCEP/Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center has sought techniques that use single-Doppler radar data to estimate the tropical cyclone wind field. A cooperative effort with NOAA/Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory/Hurricane Research Division and NCAR has resulted in significant progress in developing a method whereby radar display data are used as a proxy for a full-resolution base data and in improving and implementing existing wind retrieval and center-finding techniques. These techniques include the ground-based velocity track display (GBVTD), tracking radar echoes by correlation (TREC), GBVTDsimplex, and the principal component analysis (PCA) methods. The GBVTD and TREC algorithms are successfully applied to the Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) display data of Hurricane Bret (1999) and Tropical Storm Barry (2001). GBVTD analyses utilized circulation center estimates provided by the GBVTD-simplex and PCA methods, whereas TREC analyses utilized wind center estimates provided by radar imagery and aircraft measurements. GBVTD results demonstrate that the use of the storm motion as a proxy for the mean wind is not always appropriate and that results are sensitive to the accuracy of the circulation center estimate. TREC results support a previous conjecture that the use of polar coordinates would produce improved wind retrievals for intense tropical cyclones. However, there is a notable effect in the results when different wind center estimates are used as the origin of coordinates. The overall conclusion is that GBVTD and TREC have the ability to retrieve the intensity of a tropical cyclone with an accuracy of ϳ2 m s Ϫ1 or better if the wind intensity estimates from individual analyses are averaged together.
Performance of the experimental HWRF in the 2008 Hurricane Season
Natural Hazards, 2011
In response to the needs of improving hurricane forecasts, we have built an experimental version ... more In response to the needs of improving hurricane forecasts, we have built an experimental version of the operational Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting Model (HWRF), which is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The experimental HWRF (HWRFx) is adopted to study the intensity change problem at the highest
Monthly Weather Review, 2000
The asymmetric dynamics of the hurricane inner-core region is examined through a novel analysis o... more The asymmetric dynamics of the hurricane inner-core region is examined through a novel analysis of high temporal resolution, three-dimensional wind fields derived from airborne dual-Doppler radar. Seven consecutive composites of Hurricane Olivia's (1994) wind field with 30-min time resolution depict a weakening storm undergoing substantial structural changes. The symmetric and asymmetric mechanisms involved in this transformation are considered separately. To zeroth order the weakening of the primary circulation is consistent with the axisymmetric vortex spindown theory of Eliassen and Lystad for a neutrally stratified atmosphere. Vertical shear, however, increased dramatically during the observation period, leading to a strong projection of the convection onto an azimuthal wavenumber 1 pattern oriented along the maximum vertical shear vector. Recent theoretical ideas elucidating the dynamics of vortices in vertical shear are used to help explain this asymmetry. The role of asymmetric vorticity dynamics in explaining some of the physics of hurricane intensity change motivates a special focus on Olivia's vorticity structure. It is found that an azimuthal wavenumber 2 feature dominates the asymmetry in relative vorticity below 3-km height. The characteristics of this asymmetry deduced from reflectivity and wind composites during a portion of the observation period show some consistency with a wavenumber 2 discrete vortex Rossby edge wave. Barotropic instability is suggested as a source for the wavenumber 2 asymmetry through a series of barotropic numerical simulations. Trailing bands of vorticity with radial wavelengths of 5-10 km are observed in the inner core approximately 20 km from the storm center, and may be symmetrizing vortex Rossby waves. Elevated reflectivity bands with radial scales comparable to those of the vorticity bands, also near 20-25-km radius, may be associated with these vorticity features.
Monthly Weather Review, 2013
This study investigates the asymmetric structure of the hurricane boundary layer in relation to t... more This study investigates the asymmetric structure of the hurricane boundary layer in relation to the environmental vertical wind shear in the inner core region. Data from 1878 GPS dropsondes deployed by research aircraft in 19 hurricanes are analyzed in a composite framework. Kinematic structure analyses based on Doppler radar data from 75 flights are compared with the dropsonde composites. Shear-relative quadrant-mean composite analyses show that both the kinematic and thermodynamic boundary layer height scales tend to decrease with decreasing radius, consistent with previous axisymmetric analyses. There is still a clear separation between the kinematic and thermodynamic boundary layer heights. Both the thermodynamic mixed layer and height of maximum tangential wind speed are within the inflow layer. The inflow layer depth is found to be deeper in quadrants downshear, with the downshear right (DR) quadrant being the deepest. The mixed layer depth and height of maximum tangential win...
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Papers by Frank D Marks - NOAA Federal