Journal article
New perspectives on the synoptic and mesoscale structure of Hurricane Catarina
Augusto Jose Pereira Filho, Alexandre Bernardes Pezza, Ian Simmonds, Raquel Silva Lima, Marcio Vianna
ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH | ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC | Published : 2010
Abstract
This work explores in detail synoptic and mesoscale features of Hurricane Catarina during its life cycle from a decaying baroclinic wave to a tropical depression that underwent tropical transition (TT) and finally to a Category 2 hurricane at landfall over Santa Catarina State coast, southern Brazil. This unique system caused 11 deaths mostly off the Brazilian coast and an estimated half billion dollars in damage in a matter of a few hours on 28 March 2004. Although the closest meteorological station available was tens of kilometres away from the eye, in situ meteorological measurements provided by a work-team sent to the area where the eye made landfall unequivocally reproduces the tropical..
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Awarded by Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq)
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to a number of people and organisations, including the Civil Defence of Santa Catarina State, RINDAT/SIMEPAR, PSU, GSFC/NASA, UW/CIMMS, CPC/NCEP, and Dundee University that provided data for the present work and to Dr. Reinaldo Haas for providing his personal view from within the eye of Hurricane Catarina. This research was sponsored by the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) under grant 300456/20005-0. ABP and IS would also like to acknowledge the Australian Research Council for funding parts of this work. Finally, the input from two anonymous reviewers greatly contributed to improve and early version of this manuscript.