 All right, our next presenter is Havana Lang from Jackson State University. The title of her presentation is investigating the different characteristics of hurricanes to improve hurricane warnings. Havana lives in the Bahamas and, like I said, she attends Jackson State University. She is a rising junior, right? Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Havana Lang. I'm an undergraduate at Jackson State University, and this summer I had the privilege of working with two very great scientists, Mari Tai and Ag Amiko. So my topic was, well, the title I chose was investigating the different characteristics of hurricanes to improve hurricane warnings. First thought is I would like to give a brief background on myself. As someone aspiring to be a broadcast meteorologist, I tend to think about ways I can help in the future. Having experienced so many hurricanes helped in the development of this project. I want the public to be fully aware and more informed about the extreme effects that hurricanes can bring. Factors such as how slow or how fast a hurricane moves play a major role in the effects experienced on the ground. So my long-term career goal is to become a broadcast meteorologist. I feel like it's one thing to experience a hurricane, but it's another to actually investigate and do research on something that you've experienced. So with that being said, I believe that there are ways for broadcasters or broadcasters to educate the public on the severity and the risk of these factors. An overview of my project, this project focuses on rapid intensification and slow translation speed and associated impacts such as total rainfall and also pressure and wind. I first started with Hurricane Dorian, of which I had first-hand experience, and then considered three other hurricanes, also Hurricane Irma, Maria, and Matthew. As I said, my project investigates the broadcast side of meteorology. I want to look at ways where we can communicate better to the public about the factors and elements a hurricane may bring. I want individuals to be fully aware, knowledgeable, and more informed about the extreme effects that these factors can cause. Better communication can help to reduce weather-related losses and enhance societal benefits. In this project, I will be looking at four hurricane cases. All of the hurricanes I chose were classified as rapidly intensifying, and I noticed the slower translation speed from Hurricane Dorian. And the effects that it brought. And that is just an animation of a hurricane rapidly intensifying. So for starters, I'll just give a quick relevant facts on each of the hurricanes. Firstly, for Hurricane Irma of 2017, Hurricane Irma underwent rapid intensification while passing over the Amazon River in the Tropic Atlantic. This hurricane developed from a tropical wave. Unfavorable conditions allowed Irma to rapidly intensify into a category three hurricane, producing wind gusts from 175 to 180 miles per hour. Next we have Hurricane Matthew. Hurricane Matthew underwent a remarkable rapid intensification of 80 miles per hour in just 24 hours, intensifying from a hurricane, from a category one hurricane to a category five. Almost immediately after Matthew reached its peak intensity, the powerful category five began a slow weekend in trend. As for Hurricane Dorian, Hurricane Dorian became a category four hurricane. Later on within 24 hours it reached category five with maximum sustained winds of 185 miles per hour, and also had a very low pressure of 910 millibars. To this day it is the strongest tropical system to impact the Bahamas, producing wind gusts from 180 to 185 miles per hour. Lastly, Hurricane Maria. Hurricane Maria underwent a rapid intensification within an 18 hour period. So this hurricane strengthened from a category one to an extremely dangerous category five. First starters, what is rapid intensification? Rapid intensification is an increase in the maximum sustained winds of tropical cyclones of at least 30 knots in a 24 hour period. You commonly are most hair this term heard in August, September and October, the peak months of the Atlantic hurricane season. And this is a diagram courtesy of James Dillon that allowed me to use this, and it shows two islands of the Bahamas, which is Abaco on your right, and Grand Bahama where I was born and raised on your left. So as you can see it's peak rapid intensification like the dark red in the central of the island. Had wind gusts from 180 to 185. And also this is where it stalled for over 40 hours as a category five. The storm stalled over the Bahamas because it was squeezed between two high pressure systems, one to the northeast and to the north Atlantic over the U.S. Those intense wind currents prevented the storm from continuing its track toward the U.S. coastline now. Firstly, what is translation speed? Translation speed is the speed at which a hurricane is moving, or the duration of time it takes for a storm to move from point A of its track to point B. Slow-moving tropical cyclones can cause heavy rain because of their duration of influence. A typical hurricane's translation speed is anywhere 15 to 20 miles per hour. As for Hurricane Maria, Irma, and Matthew, all had a translation speed around 15 miles per hour. However, for Dorian, Dorian had a translation speed of just 1.3 miles per hour. Making it one of the slowest hurricanes ever documented. So if you can imagine a storm moving at 1.3 miles per hour as a category five, the damage it could do to just an island that is maybe 45 feet above ground. These are three images from back home Grand Bahama that shows the destruction from Hurricane Dorian. As you can see, there's a lot of rainfall from obviously sitting on one place for 40 hours of intense rainfall wind. There were recorded 3.4 billion in damages and three years of rebuilding. More than 13 houses or 45% of the homes on Grand Bahama were believed to have been severely or completely destroyed. So for results, I plotted the max wind and total rainfall for each hurricane. As you can see, it's a significant difference from all four. Maria is almost non-existent, but that's because it didn't have the Bahamas in its direct path. However, for Matthew and Irma, it had the Bahamas in its direct path but wasn't nearly as destructive as Dorian. And that's because of the slow translation speed. As for research conclusion, studies show the rapid intensification corresponds with all four hurricanes reaching category five. It also shows the slower the translation speed, the higher the total rainfall volume. I believe that improvement in weather forecasts can be beneficial for human life properties, safety and economic prosperity. I also included my personal conclusions, which expanded my writing and critical thinking skills, seeing that this is my first real research opportunity that I got, so that was really good. I learned plotting and graphing methods used on Jupiter Notebook as this was my first time ever working with any type of coding, really. And for next steps, as for forecasters and broadcast meteorologists, I would like to see improvement in forecasting of tropical cyclone rapid intensification and also more education to the public on rapid intensification and its severity. To conclude, I would like to thank NCAR and NSF for the opportunity and also Jerry and Ben for being so welcoming and so helpful and to the whole NSEE cohort. Thank you. For those of you that are joining us online, I just wanted to let you know that if you'd like to ask any questions, you can do so through Slido. And that's for any of the NSEE interns. Do we have any questions from the in-person, for all of you that are in-person here? Daniel? Hello, great talk. My question, I guess, is you made a really big point about the need for further education and I guess making the public more aware before a lot of these disastrous hurricanes do occur. What I'm thinking in my head is because of hurricane frequency and intensity changing as a result of climate change, it's very similar with trying to find a way to continue to educate individuals and make them believe in the science. So I guess what are some ideas you have to continue aiding in that conversation? Yes, that's a good question. I feel like, especially on rapid intensification, not much people really care about that. And we don't really talk about that, so people don't, I guess, know the severity really of it. But I would say mostly social media platforms are good and hearing from broadcast meteorologists itself on the news and really educating the public on its severity, the intensity that comes with it would be really good for the public. Hi, Harvana. Great, great presentation. Thank you. I'm on a personal note. I'm curious, what are the things you enjoyed the most this summer throughout this whole experience? Okay, as for research, probably dive it into coding because that was something that was new for me. When I would see it, like the first time I said, I'm not doing it, I'll just do it in Excel. I began to run into too many problems on Excel, so my mentor was like, yes, you need to start using this because it'll be much, much easier. But as for the fun side, I would say exploring Boulder, I went to a salsa dancing class for the first time, and that was really good. And just seeing the mountains and the views because I'm not used to it at all. Yes. Any other questions? Hi, Harvana. Great talk. I guess my question is more on the research side of things here in your next steps. I guess my question is, how do you think after all the research you've done over the summer and you learn about tropical cyclone rapid intensification, what are the next steps to improve? How can we improve forecasting of tropical cyclone RI? And you may or may not have the answer. We're still working on this actively, right? But I just want to know your thoughts on it. Thank you. No, good question. I really think going into past data would help. Like for instance, I just did four hurricanes, but I think it would have been helpful if I did 10 or 20 or 30, so I could get more information. I feel like getting out of four is just not really diving into deep. But I think looking at present hurricanes or hurricanes that are like from 2020 and then going back from years later would be really helpful. Thank you. I have a question from Aliya Brothers. What is the importance of rapid intensification? Why should the public know more about it? Okay, great. So obviously a rapidly intensifying hurricane is way different from just a normal hurricane. So when you hear rapid intensification, well to the general public, they may not know what it means. So I feel like first explaining the factors that come with it and also the severity can help with prior preparation for even going into another hurricane. So if you experience one like I did, I didn't know during was going to be how it was. But looking back now, I can say I'm prepared for another hurricane if it rapidly intensified. Yeah, so I think as you've kind of been asked several times and kind of elaborated on the fact that rapid intensification is really hard to forecast. And you yourself have experienced storms that have undergone rapid intensification. Do you think that part of the challenge of educating the public is when a storm doesn't rapidly intensify? And let's say there's a hurricane warning issued and there's minimal impacts. And how do you think that that can be maybe not directly addressed because that would just be through improving rapid intensification forecasting, but maybe just education with the public? I'm sorry. Just one more time. I don't think I got the question. That was long. That's my bad. So what do you think can help forecasters better communicate to the public when we don't necessarily know when rapid intensification is going to occur? Okay. That's a great question. So obviously it starts with forecasters itself then goes to the public. So I feel like forecasters can maybe do more experiments or have models that kind of help with the track of rapid intensification and also to actually know when it's occurring because right now we don't. So we kind of take it as it is, but as far as informing the public, I feel like it could be more like quicker just because after Dorian rapidly intensified, I found out obviously after. So it would help if I had no sooner or I would be more informed on it. I have a quick last follow up question to that, and it could be just yes or no of your opinion. Do you think that the public would benefit from a different type of classification system for hurricanes? One that would not only talk about the maximum width speed, but also taking account its translation speed, you know, whether something like Dorian basically parks itself on the Bahamas. That's different than, you know, like you said, a hurricane that is moving at 10 or 15 miles an hour. The effects are going to be different. So do you think the public could benefit some different ways of how we classify, you know, storm surge impact as part of it, rainfall impact as part of a more robust kind of classification system? Yes, I do. Just because when we have category five hurricane, we think, okay, it's strong, it's intense, but like that's all forecasters say just like in Matthew. Matthew was a hurricane, a category five hurricane, as well as Dorian, however, its effects were totally different. Yes, so just like how the public was informed about Matthew, it should be way different about Dorian just because of its translation speed, I feel. Yeah, thank you for that. Great job, Ivana.