Better hurricane forecasts.Hurricane forecasts have been improving by about 1 percent a year, says Ron McPherson, director of the National Weather Service's environmental prediction center in Camp Springs, Md. But beginning this month with the weather service's reliance on an improved storm model (SN: 6/4/94, p.357), predicting the track of a hurricane's eye should improve by at least 20 percent in one blow, he says. This new Geophysical ge·o·phys·ics n. (used with a sing. verb) The physics of the earth and its environment, including the physics of fields such as meteorology, oceanography, and seismology. Fluid Dynamics fluid dynamics n. (used with a sing. verb) The branch of applied science that is concerned with the movement of gases and liquids. Laboratory (GFDL GFDL - GNU Free Documentation License ) model should prove particularly useful in anticipating where storms will turn. Notes Jerry Jarrell, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center The U.S. National Hurricane Center, located at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, is the division of National Weather Service's Tropical Prediction Center responsible for tracking and predicting the likely behavior of tropical depressions, tropical storms and in Miami, it's also the first model "with some skill" at offering 3-day forecasts of a hurricane's intensity--or wind speeds--and the area to be pummeled by damaging winds (both depicted above). |
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