Please type your answers the following questions: 1.Why does 2011 stand out from
ID: 291056 • Letter: P
Question
Please type your answers the following questions:
1.Why does 2011 stand out from other years in terms of damage from tornados?
2.How are organizations that are able to predict tornados? What technology and data are they using?
3.Why was the tornado in Joplin , Missouri so deadly?
4.What are the challenges and short-comings of tornado prediction?
5.What have scientists learned from the 2002 Veteran's Day outbreak?
6.Describe examples of damage for each level of the EF scale.
7.Describe the Significanceof Doppler radar in forecasting.
8.Describe the development of a supercell tornado.
9.How are scientists trying to improve warning systems?What is lean time and why is important ?
10.Will global climate change have an impact on tornadoes frequency and Intensity?
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEDdOgOrsjc
Explanation / Answer
1. 2011 is by far the costliest yeard for tornadoes in U.S. history, even after adjustment for inflation, with damages amounting to more than $9 billion. Three tornadoes cause the high cost can largely be attributed to the unusual number of strong to violent tornadoes that hit the United States. This, combined with an increase in urband and subruban development and the fact that several extrmely large, violent tornadoes struck populated areas led to incredible amounts of damage.
2. For torondo prediction data collecting from a number of sources. They are radar, observation stations, weather balloons, planes and satellites, and a network of storm spotters.NSSL (National Severe Storm Laboratory) researchers have created a computer model that simulates a tornado-producing thunderstorm in 3-D. We use this model to study what changes in the environment cause a thunderstorm to produce a tornado, and how the tornado and storm behaves as it encounters different weather conditions and developed a prototype, called the four-dimensional storm cell investigator. This radar can create and manipulate dynamic, 3D cross-sections, so that meteorologists can "slice and dice" storms and view that data from multiple angles and across time.By looking at that structure, it's also possible to see common tornado signatures.
3.Joplin Tornado Whipped Up With Terrifying Speed. The deadly tornado that ripped through Joplin, Mo., Sunday evening, killing at least 89 people, intensified with unprecedented speed, according to storm trackers. The supercell thunderstorm that produced the devastating twister formed over Kansas.
4.Tornadoes are just made of much finer print, so to speak. Their paths are smaller and they last for shorter periods of time, so predicting any particular tornado requires a fine-grain understanding that's more difficult for scientists. Its predictions may be uncertain because tornado conditions don't always look the same. A number of different scenarios can result in tornados, while similar scenarios may not always produce tornados. Slight changes that meteorologists can't currently measure may tip a thunderstorm to form a tornado or not.
6. Dr. T. Theodore Fujita first introduced the EF Scale. He wanted something that categorized each tornado by intensity and area. The scale was divided into six categories:
7.The Doppler radar used in weather forecasting measures the direction and speed, or velocity, of objects such as drops of precipitation. This is called the Doppler Effect and is used to determine whether movement in the atmosphere is horizontally toward or away from the radar, which aides in weather forecasting.
8.Supercells can produce large hail, damaging winds, deadly tornadoes, flooding, dangerous cloud-to-ground lightning, and heavy rain. Severe events associated with a supercell almost always occur in the area of the updraft/downdraft interface.
9. A tornado warning means that evidence of a tornado has actually been spotted, usually by Doppler radar, which measures wind speed and direction and can thus detect rotating funnel clouds in their early stages—but so far no more than about 15 minutes in advance.The NOAA Warn-on-Forecast project is trying to determine whether tornado lead times can be extended to 30-60 minutes using computer prediction of individual convective storms.
10. Tornadoes are narrow, spinning columns of air reaching from a the base of a thunderstorm down to the ground. They actually only account for a fraction of the energy released in a thunderstorm, but that energy is concentrated on a small area., Tornadoes need two critical conditions to form: warm moist air and high wind shear. Wind shear is the spinning motion caused when winds at different heights blow at different speeds. It’s the moisture and high winds which cause most of the destruction when a tornado hits.It seems logical that climate change will have some effect on tornadoes, but for now it’s very hard to say what that effect will be.