Kirsten Corbosiero, MMM

	Dr. Corbosiero presents her work on tropical cyclone asymmetries as part of the MMM seminar series .

Kristen Corbosiero's main research area is in the field of tropical cyclone dynamics. Building on her PhD work, she has used both high resolution radar data and numerical output from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to understand the dynamics of the hurricane eyewall and inner spiral rainbands. One of the goals of her work is to investigate why and how large asymmetries and instabilities develop in the core of intense tropical cyclones, and what these asymmetries may reveal about the future intensity change of the cyclone. Corbosiero has used WRF simulations of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (2005) to investigate the representation of the eyewall and inner rainbands among model runs with different horizontal resolutions, and to compare the model output with observations. She has found that the most realistic structures are seen at the highest model resolution, but that the model storms develop far too many asymmetries in the eyewall that last too long and attain amplitudes much larger than anything documented in nature.

Corbosiero has also investigated the effects of eastern North Pacific tropical cyclones on the southwest United States . Using tropical cyclone track data and a high resolution precipitation data set, she identified 35 tropical cyclones and their remnants that brought significant rainfall to the southwest United States between 1958 and 2003. Averaged over all tropical cyclone rainfall events, ~30% of the summer rainfall is contributed by tropical cyclones, with individual storms accounting for as much as 95% of the warm season rainfall total. Corbosiero found that the last two weeks of September are the most common time for tropical cyclone rainfall to occur in the desert southwest as the Northern Hemisphere transitions into a fall pattern and midlatitude troughs penetrate further to the south off the coast of California, inducing southwesterly steering winds over the eastern North Pacific.

Publications:

Corbosiero, K.L., J. Molinari, A. R. Aiyyer, and M. L. Black, 2006: The structure and evolution of Hurricane Elena (1985). Part II: Convective asymmetries and evidence for vortex Rossby waves. Mon. Wea. Rev., In press.

Non-research activities:

Corbosiero, along with fellow ASP post doc Vani Cheruvu, organized two "Weather and Climate, The Two Go Together: Girl Scouts at NCAR" events. This program was developed by two former ASP post docs in conjunction with the Mile Hi Girl Scouts council to bring girls and young women to NCAR for a day to learn about weather and climate, perform hands-on activities and interact with female scientists.

Funding Sources:

This research is supported by the National Science Foundation.