New York City Coastal-urban Meteorology

Objective

The goal for this three-year project is to use NASA Earth-science datasets within the WRF Model to improve the quality of meteorological forecasts for the New York City and surrounding area.

Description

The meteorological forecasts will be directly input into decision support systems (DSS) used by emergency managers within the New York City (NYC) area, enabling them to provide more accurate information about the transport and dispersion (T&D) characteristics of airborne releases of toxic material. Local stakeholders in the NYC area include the Office of Emergency Management, the Police and Fire Departments, and the Port Authority. These agencies use one of two DSSs: the Department of Energy (DOE) National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center's (NARAC) system, and the Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability (HPAC) developed and operated by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

Terra MODIS captured the remains of this storm spread mostly in a horizontal band across (west to northeast) north-central Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.