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EITC |
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Emergence and Intensification of Tropical Cyclones |
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Overview |
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Tropical cyclones are among the most life threatening and destructive natural phenomena on Earth. Yet, despite significant progress made in the past century towards understanding of tropical cyclone genesis and evolution, a widely accepted theory for tropical cyclone formation and intensification does not exist.
The goal of this project is to provide a theory for the systematic organization of turbulent motions that can intensify a weak tropical cyclone and maintain it at large intensity against dissipation. The turbulent motions are intermittently generated by convection with a wide variety of scales and form organized patches of swirling motion. As these patches are deformed by the mean vortex, they transfer their momentum to the vortex and intensify it in this process that is termed as axisymmetrization. While axisymmetrization has been shown in previous studies to intensify the mean vortex, the continuous and random stirring of the vortex by the patches has not been treated. In this project, we formulate a statistical framework for the interaction of the randomly generated vorticity parches and the mean vortex and provide the theory for the systematic organization of turbulent motions that addresses the intensification and maintenance of the vortex at finite amplitude.
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NKUA
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This project is funded by the EU FP-7 |
