Conference: YCSEC-NA 2015

R Cyriac, JC Dietrich, JG Fleming, BO Blanton, RA Luettich, C Kaiser. “Forecast Predictions of Winds, Waves and Storm Surge during Hurricane Arthur (2014).” Young Coastal Scientists and Engineers Conference – North America 2015, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA, 27-29 July 2015.

Conference: ADCIRC 2015

R Cyriac, JC Dietrich, JG Fleming, BO Blanton, RA Luettich, C Kaiser. “Forecast Predictions of Winds, Waves and Storm Surge during Hurricane Arthur (2014).” ADCIRC Users Group Meeting, NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, College Park, Maryland, 30-31 March 2015.

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Conference: SIAM CSE 2015

R Cyriac, JC Dietrich+, RA Luettich Jr, JG Fleming, BO Blanton. “Strengthening the Hurricane Wave and Surge Forecast Guidance provided to Coastal Communities in North Carolina.” SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, Salt Lake City, Utah, 16-17 March 2015.

+ Presenter, if other than first author.

News: Developing Storm Surge Visualization

2015/03/10 – CCEE
Developing Storm Surge Visualization

When tropical storms approach, local, state and federal emergency managers seek predictions of storm surge and coastal flooding. In a project supported by NC Sea Grant, Dr. Casey Dietrich and Ph.D. student Rosemary Cyriac are improving the dissemination of flooding predictions to end-users by producing predictions in popular file formats. The Coastal Emergency Risk Assessment (CERA, http://nc-cera.renci.org/) provides a Web-based interface for visualizing surge predictions from computer models. Dr. Dietrich’s team is working with emergency managers in North Carolina’s coastal counties and with other decision makers. Results from daily model simulations are sent to these individuals, and they are widely used to predict inundation and flooding levels. Such predictions are also needed for engineering design and evacuation decisions. Model outputs are converted into formats compatible with commonly used visualization software, such as ArcGIS and Google Earth. By providing predictions to local emergency managers in a useful format, the information can be more easily integrated with other data, thereby making the information more accessible to those who most need it.

Poster: NCSU Symposiums 2015

R Cyriac, JC Dietrich, JG Fleming, BO Blanton, RA Luettich, C Kaiser. “Forecast Predictions of Winds, Waves and Storm Surge during Hurricane Arthur (2014).” Graduate Student Research Symposium, North Carolina State University, 25 March 2015.

R Cyriac, JC Dietrich, JG Fleming, BO Blanton, RA Luettich, C Kaiser. “Forecast Predictions of Winds, Waves and Storm Surge during Hurricane Arthur (2014).” Environmental, Water Resources and Coastal Engineering Research Symposium, North Carolina State University, 06 March 2015.

Conference: Gulf of Mexico 2015

JC Dietrich, CN Dawson. “Coastal Models of Oil Transport in the Northern Gulf of Mexico.” Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill & Ecosystem Science Conference, Houston, Texas, 16-19 February 2015.

Seminar: Old Dominion University

JC Dietrich, R Cyriac, RA Luettich Jr, JG Fleming, BO Blanton. “Hurricane Wave and Storm Surge Forecasting for the Carolina Coast.” MARI & CCPO Seminar Series, Old Dominion University, 26 January 2015.

The Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE)

Building on results from RFP-I, The Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE) remains focused on advancing fundamental understanding and modeling of the diverse physical mechanisms responsible for hydrocarbon transport in the Gulf of Mexico environment. An integral part of any informed response to a future event, like the Deepwater Horizon incident, requires knowledge of the distribution of pollutants in the water column and the ability to predict where and how fast the pollutants will spread. This information is also crucial for estimating the pollutants’ impact on the local ecosystem and coastal communities. The overall goal of CARTHE is accurate predictive modeling of pollutant transport from ocean-bottom release to landfall on the beach.

This project specifically identifies two topics, whose understanding is critical for oil spill dispersion prediction; namely (i) the dynamics of transport in the near-surface ocean and lower atmosphere, and (ii) transport in deep-ocean plumes.

Beyond enabling a more efficient and more effective response to a future undersea oil release, broader impacts of this project include education and training of graduate students and postdocs, as well as far-reaching applications of the new scientific insight for navigation using local currents, potential off-shore green energy production, the influence of upper-ocean flows on the ocean’s carbon intake in the climate system, a better representation of ocean and atmosphere heat exchanges for hurricane predictions, and finally for public beach safety and welfare.

TM Özgökmen, et al. “The Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE).” Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, 2015-2017 GoMRI Research Consortia (RFP-IV), 2015/01/01 to 2017/12/31, more than $20,000,000 (Dietrich: $225,874).