A newer version of this visualization is available.
What Are The Chances Of Another Katrina?
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- Visualizations by:
- Greg Shirah
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- Written by:
- Patrick Lynch
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- Scientific consulting by:
- Timothy Hall
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- Produced by:
- Jefferson Beck and
- Joy Ng
- View full credits
The U.S. hasn’t experienced the landfall of a Category 3 hurricane or larger since 2005, when Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma all hit the U.S. coast. According to a new NASA study, a string of nine years without a major hurricane landfall in the U.S. is Iikely to come along only once every 177 years.
The current nine-year “drought” is the longest period of time that has passed without a major hurricane making landfall in the U.S. since reliable records began in 1850, said Timothy Hall, a research scientist who studies hurricanes at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York.
The National Hurricane Center calls any Category 3 or more intense hurricane a “major” storm. Hall and colleague Kelly Hereid, who works for ACE Tempest Re, a reinsurance firm based in Connecticut, ran a statistical hurricane model based on a record of Atlantic tropical cyclones from 1950 to 2012 and sea surface temperature data.
The researchers ran 1,000 computer simulations of the period from 1950-2012 – in effect simulating 63,000 separate Atlantic hurricane seasons. They found that a nine-year period without a major landfall is likely to occur once every 177 years on average.
While the study did not delve into the meteorological causes behind this lack of major hurricane landfalls, Hall said it appears it is a result of luck.
Research: The frequency and duration of U.S. hurricane droughts.
Journal: Geophysical Research Letters, May 5, 2015.
Link to paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL063652/full.
Here is the YouTube video.
According to a new NASA study, a string of nine years without a major hurricane landfall in the U.S. is Iikely to come along only once every 177 years. This video explains the findings of this study.
For complete transcript, click here.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Animator
- Joy Ng (KBRwyle)
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Data visualizer
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
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Writer
- Patrick Lynch (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
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Scientist
- Timothy Hall (NASA/GSFC GISS) [Lead]
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Producers
- Jefferson Beck (KBR Wyle Services, LLC) [Lead]
- Joy Ng (KBRwyle) [Lead]
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Videographers
- John Caldwell (AIMM)
- Rob Andreoli (AIMM)
Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Tapes
This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:-
What Are The Chances Of Another Katrina?
(ID: 2015045)
Wednesday, May 13, 2015 at 4:00AM
Produced by - Liam Krauss