Modelling Hurricane Exposure and Wind Speed on a Mesoclimate Scale: A Case Study from Cusuco NP, Honduras

Abstract

High energy weather events are often expected to play a substantial role in biotic community dynamics and large scale diversity patterns but their contribution is hard to prove. Currently, observations are limited to the documentation of accidental records after the passing of such events. A more comprehensive approach is synthesising weather events in a location over a long time period, ideally at a high spatial resolution and on a large geographic scale. We provide a detailed overview on how to generate hurricane exposure data at a meso-climate level for a specific region. As a case study we modelled landscape hurricane exposure in Cusuco National Park (CNP), Honduras with a resolution of 50 m×50 m patches. We calculated actual hurricane exposure vulnerability site scores (EVVS) through the combination of a wind pressure model, an exposure model that can incorporate simple wind dynamics within a 3-dimensional landscape and the integration of historical hurricanes data. The EVSS was calculated as a weighted function of sites exposure, hurricane frequency and maximum wind velocity. Eleven hurricanes were found to have affected CNP between 1995 and 2010. The highest EVSS’s were predicted to be on South and South-East facing sites of the park. Ground validation demonstrated that the South-solution (i.e. the South wind inflow direction) explained most of the observed tree damage (90% of the observed tree damage in the field). Incorporating historical data to the model to calculate actual hurricane exposure values, instead of potential exposure values, increased the model fit by 50%.

A New Framework to Assess Relative Ecosystem Vulnerability to Climate Change

“…The x is a constant that is estimated to be 0.7 by Batke et al . (). Fifty kilometer wide buffers around each storm track were created using the R package “rgeos.” Wind speeds were calculated for each point within the storm track.…”

“…Equation (1) was used when r > Rmax, and Equation (2) when r < Rmax. The x is a constant that is estimated to be 0.7 by Batke et al (2014). Fifty kilometer wide buffers around each storm track were created using the R package "rgeos."…”

An adaptive robust framework for the optimization of the resilience of interdependent infrastructures under natural hazards

“…The wind speeds profile of a storm can be generated through parametric radial wind field models (Davis, Wang et al 2008, Holland, Belanger et al 2010, Batke, Jocque et al 2014). The wind speed at location ( , ) at time can be represented by Holland, Belanger et al (2010)…”

“…where is the distance from the point to the storm center ( ), ( ) , which moves with the translational velocity of the storm, is the maximum wind speed, is the radius of maximum wind (also called wind radius) and can be calculated from the storm eye-diameter (ED) (Batke, Jocque et al 2014), is the empirical Holland parameter and can be estimated based on the central pressure of the storm, and is a scaling parameter that adjusts the wind profile shape and a value of = 0.5 is typically used (Holland, Belanger et al 2010). Structural damage from windstorms is mostly related to peak gust wind speed, which is the largest speed during a specified period (usually 3 seconds).…”

“…For the pre-disruption investment planning of interdependent CIs under NHs, however, the pure worst-case-oriented ARO (i.e., DAD) approaches may be overly conservative. Actually, future projections of specific NH events are usually available via climate models (Davis, Wang et al 2008, Holland, Belanger et al 2010, Batke, Jocque et al 2014, though usually associated with uncertainties. Without taking into account the projection information of specific NHs as well as the spatiotemporal correlations of the NHs which strongly impact the probabilities of some common cause failures, the pure worst-case-oriented ARO approaches might overestimate the system functionality loss and lead to inefficient or even misleading protection decisions.…”