Exposure of counties in the continental United States to tropical storm and hurricane conditions was determined using the historic record of storm tracks for the period 1851–2003. Two approaches were used to determine exposure: (1) cumulative number of hits, with a hit occurring when the storm’s path crosses a county and (2) cumulative exposure factor, which describes how much of the county has...

Coastal hurricanes create tremendous environmental change and generate huge financial losses. The relative infrequency of severe coastal hurricanes implies that empirical probability estimates of the next big catastrophe will be unreliable. Here we model hurricane activity and resulting insured losses using extreme value theory and Bayesian models. The occurrence of a hurricane above a specifie...

As hurricanes approach landfall, there are several hazards for which coastal populations must be prepared. Damaging winds, torrential rains, and tornadoes play havoc with both the coast and inland areas; but, the biggest seaside menace to life and property is the storm surge. Wind fields are used as the primary forcing for the numerical forecasts of the coastal ocean response to hurricane force...

The wind power input to the ocean general circulation is usually calculated from the time-averaged wind products. Here, this wind power input is reexamined using available observations, focusing on the role of the synoptically varying wind. Power input to the ocean general circulation is found to increase by over 70%when 6-hourly winds are used instead of monthly winds. Much of the increase occ...

Sea-ice conditions and kinematics are studied in the Palmer Long-Term Ecological Research (PAL LTER) study region west of the Antarctic Peninsula. Remote sensing data from ERS-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Scatterometer (EScat) and from DMSP SSM/I, are used to study the influence of synoptic weather systems on sea-ice characteristics during July-August 1992. Weather records from Palmer S...

The reefs in some islands of Andaman and Nicobar suffered severe damage following a tropical storm in the Bay of Bengal off Myanmar coast during 13-17 March 2011. Surveys were conducted at eight sites in Andaman, of which five were located in the Ritchie's Archipelago where maximum wind speeds of 11 m s(-1) was observed; and three around Port Blair which lay on the leeward side of the storm and...

Extreme wind loads used in design (e.g., the 50-yr wind load) and include nominal design wind loads ultimate wind loads. This paper briefly reviews the relationship between extreme wind loads and extreme wind speeds, assessments of epochal versus ‘peak-overthreshold’ approaches for estimating extreme non-tornadic winds in areas not subjected to tropical storms, and methods for estimating extrem...

Mineral dust emission accounts for a substantial portion of particles present in the troposphere. It is emitted mostly from desert areas, mainly through intense storm episodes. The aim of this work was to quantify sizesegregated fluxes of mineral dust particles emitted during storm events occurring in desert areas of northern China (Alashan desert, Inner Mongolia), known to act as one of the st...

Predicting the probability of wind damage in both natural and managed forests is important for understanding forest ecosystem functioning, the environmental impact of storms and for forest risk management. We undertook a thorough validation of three versions of the hybrid-mechanistic wind risk model, ForestGALES, and a statistical logistic regression model, against observed damage in a Scottish...

In this paper, we present an integrated wind-erosion modelling system which couples a physically based wind-erosion scheme, a high-resolution atmospheric model and a dust-transport model with a geographic information database. This system can be used to determine the pattern and intensity of wind erosion, in particular, dust emission from the surface and dust concentration in the atmosphere. Th...