"That's how we've learned about how storms evolve," Dr. Marks said.
NASA conducted the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) mission to study how storms form and rapidly intensify into hurricanes.
First, the background: Scientists are still figuring out how storms will be altered as global warming proceeds, but they are pretty certain about some things.
This phenomenon, driven by atmospheric pressure differences that affect how storms cross the ocean, is the dominant mode of climate variability in the region.
But there is still a wide range of projections indicating how much warmer things may get, how storm and drought patterns may respond and what the effects will be on ecosystems, agriculture and health.
Todd Miner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, said that a lack of detailed monitoring of the behavior of hurricanes far from shore limited understanding of how storms might go through abrupt cycles of intensifying and weakening.
We investigate how storm properties and seasonal, inter-annual, and decadal precipitation variabilities differed between GCMs/RCMs and observed records in these regions.
Future work to resolve these differences should examine how storm duration is related to gust factors and averaging times and the role of vertical velocity components in initiating vehicle motion.
In this paper we report on the studies of cosmic ray cutoff rigidity variations during 7 13 November 2004 showing how storm conditions can affect the direct cosmic ray access to the inner magnetosphere.
USGS oceanographer Abby Sallenger says the data could be "the best gathered on the regional-scale impact of hurricanes on beaches" and will provide "a great opportunity" to test models of how storms reshape coasts.
