Science in the Spotlight: Hurricane Melissa and predicting extreme weather
In late October, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica and other Caribbean nations. The Category 5 storm had record-breaking wind gusts and caused catastrophic damage, with nearly $10 billion in losses in Jamaica alone. While close to 100 deaths have been attributed to Melissa, the toll would likely be higher if the storm had not been well forecasted. As island nations begin to recover, how do researchers forecast extreme weather events like Hurricane Melissa? In this “Science in the Spotlight” Explorer Series Conversation, we talk with NSF NCAR scientist Falko Judt about Hurricane Melissa and his work in forecasting such impactful storms.
Falko Judt
Falko Judt is a research meteorologist in the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Laboratory (MMM) at NSF NCAR. His research interests are in tropical meteorology (especially hurricanes), atmospheric predictability, and more broadly, the science behind weather prediction. One of his overarching research goals is to improve the prediction of extreme weather phenomena. Judt has expertise in analyzing numerical simulations as well as observations and has recently become hooked by global cloud-resolving models and their promise to predict the weather from local to planetary scales. On any given day you will probably find him running and analyzing global cloud-resolving simulations.