The Deadliest Tropical Cyclone in History

Frank, Neil L.; Husain, Shahid

doi:10.1175/1520-0477(1971)052<0438:tdtcih>2.0.co;2

Cited by 124 publications

(56 citation statements)

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“…In particular, tropical cyclones (TCs) and associated storm surges occasionally cause devastating disasters in the coastal regions facing the Bay of Bengal. The 1970 Bhola cyclone struck East Bangladesh and India's West Bengal and claimed 500,000 lives, primarily as a result of the storm surge that flooded over the Ganges Delta (Frank and Husain 1971). The 1991 Bangladesh cyclone struck southeastern Bangladesh and forced a storm surge inland, killing at least 138,000 people (Obashi 1994).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Simulation of Myanmar Cyclone Nargis and the Associated Storm Surge Part II: Ensemble Prediction

Saitō¹,

Kuroda²,

Kunii³

et al. 2010

Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan

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A mesoscale ensemble prediction system (EPS) employing the Japan Meteorological Agency's (JMA's) highresolution global analysis and forecast for initial and boundary conditions of the control run and perturbations from JMA's one-week global EPS for initial and boundary perturbations is developed and applied to numerical simulations of cyclone Nargis. Using the JMA nonhydrostatic model (NHM) with a horizontal resolution of 10 km, the system reproduces Nargis' development and the associated storm surge in southwestern Myanmar with plausible ensemble spreads.In the ensemble prediction with initial boundary perturbations, predicted positions of cyclone centers are distributed in an elliptic area whose major axis is oriented east-northeast, suggesting that track forecast errors tend to increase in the moving direction of Nargis. The location of the minimum surface pressure of the ensemble mean is closer to the best track than the control run, and root mean square errors (RMSEs) of the ensemble mean against analyses are smaller than those of the control run in all forecast variables. However, ensemble spreads tend to decrease in the latter half of the forecast period, and the cyclone center does not disperse enough compared with the track forecast error without the lateral boundary perturbation.When lateral boundary perturbations are implemented in addition to the initial perturbations, dispersion of the cyclone center and spread of the center pressure increase by about 50% at forecast time (FT) ¼ 42. The location of the minimum surface pressure in the ensemble mean shifts westward, reducing the track error. RMSEs of ensemble means become smaller than the ensemble prediction without lateral boundary perturbations.Ensemble forecasts of storm surge were conducted using the Princeton Ocean Model (POM). When surface wind and sea level pressure from JMA's global EPS were input, the maximum surge was no more than 0.6 m even in the highest ensemble member. The POM simulation driven by the mesoscale ensemble prediction with NHM predicted a storm surge near 4 m in southwestern Myanmar, where the timings of the peak surge were dispersed widely from FT ¼ 33 to FT ¼ 56. When the ensemble mean was input to POM, the maximum surge was 1.5 m, despite the better accuracy of the ensemble mean in terms of RMSE. This result shows that the scenario is more important than the ensemble mean when applying the mesoscale ensemble prediction to disaster prevention.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Simulation of Myanmar Cyclone Nargis and the Associated Storm Surge Part II: Ensemble Prediction

Saitō¹,

Kuroda²,

Kunii³

et al. 2010

Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan

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“…Though significant improvements have been achieved in cyclone warning dissemination in Bangladesh, quality of the warning messages has not been improved much in last decades (C. E. Haque & Blair, 1992;Hossain et al, 2008;Tatham, Spens, & Oloruntoba, 2009). Comparison between the earlier study conducted after the great Bhola cyclone in 1970 (Frank & Husain, 1971) and study carried out after Cyclone Sidr in 2007(Hossain et al, 2008 reveals that BMD's TC forecasting performance has not been improved much during the last several decades. Moreover, the existing warning system is not easy to understand and even sometimes incomprehensible to educated people as well (C. E. Haque & Blair, 1992;Miyan, 2006).…”

Section: Cyclone Early Warning System In Bangladeshmentioning

confidence: 88%

An Informed System Development Approach to Tropical Cyclone Track and Intensity Forecasting

Roy

2016

Linköping Studies in Science and Technology. Dissertations

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Introduction: Tropical Cyclones (TCs) inflict considerable damage to life and property every year. A major problem is that residents often hesitate to follow evacuation orders when the early warning messages are perceived as inaccurate or uninformative. The root problem is that providing accurate early forecasts can be difficult, especially in countries with less economic and technical means. Aim:The aim of the thesis is to investigate how cyclone early warning systems can be technically improved. This means, first, identifying problems associated with the current cyclone early warning systems, and second, investigating if biologically based Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are feasible to solve some of the identified problems.Method: First, for evaluating the efficiency of cyclone early warning systems, Bangladesh was selected as study area, where a questionnaire survey and an in-depth interview were administered. Second, a review of currently operational TC track forecasting techniques was conducted to gain a better understanding of various techniques' prediction performance, data requirements, and computational resource requirements. Third, a technique using biologically based ANNs was developed to produce TC track and intensity forecasts. Systematic testing was used to find optimal values for simulation parameters, such as feature-detector receptive field size, the mixture of unsupervised and supervised learning, and learning rate schedule. Five types of 2D data were used for training. The networks were tested on two types of novel data, to assess their generalization performance. Results:A major problem that is identified in the thesis is that the meteorologists at the Bangladesh Meteorological Department are currently not capable of providing accurate TC forecasts. This is an important contributing factor to residents' reluctance to evacuate. To address this issue, an ANN-based TC track and intensity forecasting technique was developed that can produce early and accurate forecasts, uses freely available satellite images, and does not require extensive computational resources to run. Bidirectional connections, combined supervised and unsupervised learning, and a deep hierarchical structure assists the parallel extraction of useful features from five types of 2D data. The trained networks were tested on two types of novel data: First, tests were performed with novel data covering the end of the lifecycle of trained cyclones; for these test data, the forecasts produced by the networks were correct in 91-100% of the cases. Second, the networks were tested with data of a novel TC; in this case, the networks performed with between 30% and 45% accuracy (for intensity forecasts). Conclusions:The ANN technique developed in this thesis could, with further extensions and up-scaling, using additional types of input images of a greater number of TCs, improve the efficiency of cyclone early warning systems in countries with less economic and technical means. The thesis work also creates opportunities for furthe...

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“…In the deadly Bangladesh storm surge of 12 November 1970, the central pressure of the typhoon at landfall was 940 mb and the maximum wind speeds 63 m sec -~ (Murty et al, 1986). In the 'Bakerganj' cyclone of 1876, the central pressure was 930 mb (Frank and Husain, 1971). These cyclones were intense enough to cause much devastation.…”

Section: Greater Storm Surges In Future Due To Hypercanesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Mitigating the effects of storm surges generated by tropical cyclones: A proposal

Murty¹,

El‐Sabh

1992

Nat Hazards

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One of the regions of the globe that is frequently and very significantly affected by storm surges is Bangladesh. These high amplitude water-level oscillations are generated by the meteorological forcing fields due to tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal. The tide also plays a significant role in determining the time history of the total water level. Due to the greenhouse warming associated with the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it is expected that the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal will increase substantially within the next 50 to 100 years. This new breed of tropical cyclones, referred to as 'hypercanes', will generate storm surges on the coast of Bangladesh which could attain amplitudes of up to 15 m, much greater than the present-day amplitudes of up to 6 m. Various mitigation procedures are discussed and compared.

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The Deadliest Tropical Cyclone in History

Cited by 124 publications

References 0 publications

Numerical Simulation of Myanmar Cyclone Nargis and the Associated Storm Surge Part II: Ensemble Prediction

Numerical Simulation of Myanmar Cyclone Nargis and the Associated Storm Surge Part II: Ensemble Prediction

An Informed System Development Approach to Tropical Cyclone Track and Intensity Forecasting

Mitigating the effects of storm surges generated by tropical cyclones: A proposal

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