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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 235 records · Page 13
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Bubbles in US gasoline prices: Assessing the role of hurricanes and anti–price gouging laws

This paper examines the presence of bubbles — price changes that cannot be attributed to market fundamentals — in weekly US retail gasoline prices for ten US cities, and whether these bubbles are affected by hurricane events and anti–price gouging laws. Rolling-window, right-tailed unit root tests were used to identify and date bubbles. The analysis found 6 to 22 bubbles, lasting 4 weeks or longer, in city-level retail gasoline prices between 2000 and 2017. A linear regression model of the adjustment speed coefficients from the bubble identification step found that hurricane events increase the rate of price explosivity (or slow the rate of return to equilibrium) following a shock. Furthermore, the regression estimates also imply that state anti–price gouging laws can counteract these effects.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Component Assessment of the Electric Transmission Grid to Hurricanes

The increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events from climate change necessitates understanding impacts on critical infrastructure, particularly electrical transmission grids. One of the foundational concepts of a grid's resilience is its robustness to extreme weather events, such as hurricanes. Resilience of the electric grid to high wind speeds is predicated upon the location and physical characteristics of the system components. Previous modeling assessments of electric grid failure were done at the systems level with assumptions on location and type of specific components. To facilitate more explicit adaptation metrics, accurate component-level information is needed. In this study, we build and utilize a data set of location, physical characteristics, and age of transmission structures for nine counties in the Florida Panhandle. These component characteristics were then simulated for failure under a variety of scenarios using fragility curves. Eight hurricanes were modeled using Hazus from the Federal Emergency Management Administration and the resulting impact to the network was assessed. The network was generated using the transmission lines and towers, showing increasing impacts to network efficiency with larger storms. Although modern transmission structures are built under the more stringent extreme wind loading construction standards, the prevalence of older, wooden transmission structures throughout the region poses a substantial risk to reliable electricity transmission during tropical cyclone events from the Gulf of Mexico.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Climate change and federal aid disbursements after Hurricane Harvey: an extreme event attribution analysis

The role climate change plays in increasing the burden placed on governments and insurers to pay for recovery has not been extensively explored and is the focus of this study. This study examines the impacts of climate change attributed flooding on federal disaster aid disbursement in Harris County, Texas following Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Our approach uses flood models to estimate the amount of flood damages attributable and not attributable to climate change under two climate change attribution scenarios from peer reviewed studies: 20% and 38% increases in rainfall associated with the hurricane due to climate change. These estimates are combined with census tract-level disbursement data for FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and the Individual Assistance (IA) part of the Individuals and Households Program. We employ spatial lag regression models with direct and spatial spillover effects to analyze the relationship between a tract’s flood damages—both attributed and not attributed to climate change—and federal disaster aid. We find that both types of flood damage shape federal aid disbursements, but that climate change attributed damages tend to have larger effect sizes (elasticities) especially for IA. Specifically, for a 1% increase in additional climate change attributed damages per household in a census tract (under the 20% scenario), expected NFIP levels in that census tract are 0.26% higher and IA levels are 0.3% higher. Implications center on federal funding in an era of climate change.

FEMA↗
DOE OSTI2021

Simulation of Hurricane Harvey flood event through coupled hydrologic-hydraulic models: Challenges and next steps

Using the 2017 Hurricane Harvey flood event as a test case, this study set up a series of sensitivity analyses to highlight three challenges associated with large-scale flood inundation modeling, including (a) model parameterization, (b) errors in digital elevation models, and (c) effects of reservoir retention. Driven by radar-based hourly rainfall data, a series of hydrologic-hydraulic models including the VIC hydrologic model, RAPID routing model, and Flood2D-GPU hydrodynamic model are set up over Harris County, Texas, to simulate flood inundation and hazards. The results demonstrate the importance of hydrologic parameters in improving flood modeling. For a large flood event such as Hurricane Harvey, the effect of the initial water depths is insignificant. The Manning's n values may increase the peak water depth by ~1%, the flood extents by 65km 2 , and the high danger zone by ~6%. On the contrary, the bathymetry correction factors may reduce the flood extent by ~1.4% and the high-danger zone by ~4%. Reducing the reservoir storage capacity to 1% may increase the flood extent by ~4% and the high-danger zone by ~17%. This study may provide supporting information to guide and prioritize the development of future high-performance computing hydrodynamic large-scale flood simulations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2002

Hurricane research with the high altitude MMIC sounding radiometer

We present preliminary results for hurricane Erin, made on 9/10/01, which illustrate the very substantial scattering that can be observed over intense convective and precipitating systems, as well as other characteristics of a hurricane.

CAMEX HAMSR microwave sounder hurricane scattering↗
NASA NTRS2003

Conceptual design of a geostationary radar for hurricane studies

A novel 35-GHz Doppler radar instrument concept and the associated critical technologies are being developed for detailed monitoring of hurricanes and severe storms from a geostationary orbit. This instrument is designed to make quantitative rainfall rate profiling measurements at 13-km horizontal resolution and 300-m vertical resolution, and the radial Doppler velocity at 0.3 m/s precision, of the 3-D hurricane structure once per hour throughout its life cycle.

precipitation↗
NASA NTRS2006

Combined Active and Passive Remote Sensing of Hurricane Ocean Winds

The synergism of active and passive microwave techniques for hurricane ocean wind remote sensing is explored. We performed the analysis of Windsat data for Atlantic hurricanes in 2003-2005. The polarimetric third Stokes parameter observations from the Windsat 10, 18 and 37 GHz channels were collocated with the ocean surface winds from the Holland wind model, the QuikSCAT wind vectors and the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) operated by the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The collocated data were binned as a function of wind speed and wind direction, and were expanded by sinusoidal series of the relative azimuth angles between wind and observation directions. The coefficients of the sinusoidal series, corrected for atmospheric attenuation, have been used to develop an empirical geophysical model function (GMF). The Windsat GMF for extreme high wind compares very well with the aircraft radiometer and radar measurements.

sea surface winds↗
NASA NTRS2010

Design Considerations for a Dual-Frequency Radar for Sea Spray Measurement in Hurricanes

Over the last few years, researchers have determined that sea spray from breaking waves can have a large effect on the magnitude and distribution of the air-sea energy flux at hurricane-force wind speeds. Characterizing the fluxes requires estimates of the height-dependent droplet size distribution (DSD). Currently, the few available measurements have been acquired with spectrometer probes, which can provide only flight-level measurements. As such, in-situ measurement of near-surface droplet fluxes in hurricanes with these instruments is, at best, extremely challenging, if at all possible. This paper describes an airborne dual-wavelength radar profiler concept to retrieve the DSD of sea spray.

hurricanes↗
NASA NTRS2011

CloudSat Reflectivity Data Visualization Inside Hurricanes

Animations and other outreach products have been created and released to the public quickly after the CloudSat spacecraft flew over hurricanes. The automated script scans through the CloudSat quicklook data to find significant atmospheric moisture content. Once such a region is found, data from multiple sources is combined to produce the data products and the animations. KMZ products are quickly generated from the quicklook data for viewing in Google Earth and other tools. Animations are also generated to show the atmospheric moisture data in context with the storm cloud imagery. Global images from GOES satellites are shown to give context. The visualization provides better understanding of the interior of the hurricane storm clouds, which is difficult to observe directly. The automated process creates the finished animation in the High Definition (HD) video format for quick release to the media and public.

visualization↗
NASA NTRS2013

Analyzing Tropical Waves Using the Parallel Ensemble Empirical Model Decomposition Method: Preliminary Results from Hurricane Sandy

In this study, we discuss the performance of the parallel ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EMD) in the analysis of tropical waves that are associated with tropical cyclone (TC) formation. To efficiently analyze high-resolution, global, multiple-dimensional data sets, we first implement multilevel parallelism into the ensemble EMD (EEMD) and obtain a parallel speedup of 720 using 200 eight-core processors. We then apply the parallel EEMD (PEEMD) to extract the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) from preselected data sets that represent (1) idealized tropical waves and (2) large-scale environmental flows associated with Hurricane Sandy (2012). Results indicate that the PEEMD is efficient and effective in revealing the major wave characteristics of the data, such as wavelengths and periods, by sifting out the dominant (wave) components. This approach has a potential for hurricane climate study by examining the statistical relationship between tropical waves and TC formation.

PEEMD↗
NASA NTRS2013

The Evolution and Role of the Saharan Air Layer During Hurricane Helene (2006)

The Saharan air layer (SAL) has received considerable attention in recent years as a potential negative influence on the formation and development of Atlantic tropical cyclones. Observations of substantial Saharan dust in the near environment of Hurricane Helene (2006) during the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Activities (AMMA) Experiment (NAMMA) field campaign led to suggestions about the suppressing influence of the SAL in this case. In this study, a suite of satellite remote sensing data, global meteorological analyses, and airborne data are used to characterize the evolution of the SAL in the environment of Helene and assess its possible impact on the intensity of the storm. The influence of the SAL on Helene appears to be limited to the earliest stages of development, although the magnitude of that impact is difficult to determine observationally. Saharan dust was observed on the periphery of the storm during the first two days of development after genesis when intensification was slow. Much of the dust was observed to move well westward of the storm thereafter, with little SAL air present during the remainder of the storm's lifetime and with the storm gradually becoming a category-3 strength storm four days later. Dry air observed to wrap around the periphery of Helene was diagnosed to be primarily non-Saharan in origin (the result of subsidence) and appeared to have little impact on storm intensity. The eventual weakening of the storm is suggested to result from an eyewall replacement cycle and substantial reduction of the sea surface temperatures beneath the hurricane as its forward motion decreased.

Hurricane Helene↗
NASA NTRS2015

The Effect of Hurricanes on Annual Precipitation in Maryland and the Connection to Global Climate Change

Precipitation is a vital aspect of our lives droughts, floods and other related disasters that involve precipitation can cause costly damage in the economic system and general society. Purpose of this project is to determine what, if any effect do hurricanes have on annual precipitation in Maryland Research will be conducted on Marylands terrain, climatology, annual precipitation, and precipitation contributed from hurricanes Possible connections to climate change

precipitation↗
NASA NTRS2016

Analysis of High Temporal and Spatial Observations of Hurricane Joaquin During TCI-15

Objectives: Provide an example of why analysis of high density soundings across Hurricane Joaquin also require highly accurate center positions; Describe technique for calculating 3-D zero-wind center positions from the highly accurate GPS positions of sequences of High-Density Sounding System (HDSS) soundings as they fall from 10 km to the ocean surface; Illustrate the vertical tilt of the vortex above 4-5 km during two center passes through Hurricane Joaquin on 4 October 2015.

wind↗
DOE OSTI2020

Observations of PV Systems Post-Hurricane

NREL's observations of post-hurricane photovoltaic (PV) systems were shared with PV reliability researchers during the Photovoltaic Reliability Workshop held in Lakewood, Colorado the week of February 26, 2018. NREL hosts an annual Photovoltaic Reliability Workshop (PVRW) so that solar technology experts can share information leading to the improvement of PV module reliability. Such improvement reduces the cost of solar electricity and promotes investor confidence in the technology - both critical goals for moving PV technologies deeper into the electricity marketplace. This presentation is intended to share real world examples of PV survivability during and after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Puerto Rico Grid and Recovery Post Hurricane Maria

This presentation discusses the impact of and recovery from Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico. The hurricanes hit two weeks apart in 2017, resulting in damage to all elements (generation, distribution, and transmission) of Puerto Rico's already fragile energy system.

demand response↗
DOE OSTI2021

Attributable human-induced changes in the magnitude of flooding in the Houston, Texas region during Hurricane Harvey

Abstract The human influence on precipitation during tropical cyclones due to the global warming is now well documented in the literature. Several studies have found increases in Hurricane Harvey’s total precipitation over the Greater Houston area ranging from the Clausius-Clapeyron limit of 7% to as much as 38% locally. Here we use a hydraulic model to translate these attribution statements about precipitation to statements about the resultant flooding and associated damages. We find that while the attributable increase in the total volume of flood waters is the same as the attributable increase in precipitation, the attributable increase in the total area of the flood is less. However, we also find that in the most heavily flooded parts of Houston, the local attributable increases in flood area and volume are substantially larger than the increase in total precipitation. The results of this storyline attribution analysis of the Houston flood area are used to make an intuitive best estimate of the cost of Hurricane Harvey attributable to anthropogenic global warming as thirteen billion US dollars.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗