Environmental and Societal Impacts Group (ESIG)

Mesoscale Events and Impacts

Extreme Mesoscale Events and Impacts, 1992-1994. Special funds were provided by NSF/ATM to address the impacts of a recent set of extreme weather-related impacts in the U.S. In this project, Pielke Jr. assessed the broad impacts of hurricanes, floods, and blizzards. The project specifically analyzes the impacts-via economic as well as other factors-of three events: Hurricane Andrew (1992), the Midwest Floods (1993), and the "Superstorm" Blizzard (1993).

Lessons from these cases provide a significant baseline assessment of how scientific information can play an increasingly useful role in preparation, mitigation, and response efforts. Looking to the future, communities that respond successfully to weather extremes demonstrate how current and future weather research might be leveraged to improve decisions, with the goal of more generally reducing societal vulnerability to extreme weather events.

Hurricane Andrew Case Study. In late August 1992, Hurricane Andrew swept over the island of Eleuthra in the Bahamas, slammed into the Florida Coast south of Miami, and continued into the Gulf of Mexico where it made a final landfall in Louisiana. For many, Andrew was a wake-up call. It showed the extreme forces of this particular type of mesoscale phenomenon and highlighted the importance of society's preparedness to mitigate weather impacts.

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 (Andrew was "a wobble away from a greater disaster." that's how Steven Doig, a reporter for the Miami Herald referred to Hurricane Andrew. He prepared a schematic which supports his contention. Instead of a $30 billion disaster, Andrew could have been a $75 billion disaster, had it made landfall 20 miles farther north, putting downtown Miami directly in its path. Figure courtesy of the Miami Herald.)
Leaving billions of dollars in damages in its wake, Andrew's impacts were an indication that we in the U.S. might have opportunities to improve our preparedness for extreme weather events.

As a contribution to the area of mesoscale impact assessment, Pielke Jr. has prepared a report on Hurricane Andrew entitled Hurricane Andrew in South Florida: Mesoscale Weather and Societal Responses, which seeks to sketch a picture of the processes of hurricane preparedness in the context of societal vulnerability to hurricanes.

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 Cover of Hurricane Andrew Report. To see the explanation of the three scenarios on the cover, click here (93K).
The purpose is to make linkages between clusters of research, particularly forecasts and their uses, in the hope that a community of mesoscale weather-related impacts researchers can be identified and encouraged to focus on the challenge of reducing vulnerabilities to hurricanes. The report attempts to lay a foundation for a comprehensive assessment of how forecast improvements can be used to reduce U.S. vulnerability to hurricanes.

Mesoscale Weather Assessment. Rhodes and Pielke Jr. continued their exploration of the historical development of societal mechanisms and institutions and of scientific research used to manage and mitigate the adverse impacts of weather phenomena.

They utilize three categories of tools and techniques that society has developed to reduce vulnerability and to classify societal responses to weather events:

While the post- World War II era has been characterized by significant advances in understanding and predicting weather on time scales of minutes to days, prior to the contributions of modern meteorological research, society devised various forms of "technology" to manage weather vulnerability. These are the mitigative and anticipatory technologies that helped past generations reduce their weather vulnerability before modern weather prediction was a reality.

Mitigation refers to technologies and arrangements that allow a decision-maker to largely avoid behavioral changes during a particular weather event. Anticipation refers to various forms of advance preparation based on knowledge of a general threat (e.g., hurricane seasons) in order to help reduce and recover from the adverse impacts of the next specific event (e.g., Hurricane Andrew in 1992). The tools and techniques that individuals, businesses, and governments employ to reduce their vulnerability depend on the context of particular weather events.

Improvements in each of the three categories of technology can help society reduce its vulnerability to weather even further, but it must be recognized that improvements in any one of the categories cannot eliminate the need for maintaining and improving the contributions of the other two categories.

Weather Impacts Workshop. With regard to weather research, it seems that a paradox exists: With a seemingly long record of calls for systematic research on the societal aspects of weather impacts and continuing evidence of weather impacts on society (e.g., Hurricane Andrew, Midwest Floods of 1993), it would seem that a subfield of weather impacts assessment ought to be flourishing. However, by many indications, it is not. Given the extensive effects of weather on human affairs, the systematic study of weather impacts from a social science perspective is needed to demonstrate and enhance the use and value of weather research with respect to societal needs.

Pielke Jr. convened a weather impacts assessment "network" informal planning meeting, which was held 8-9 August 1995 in Boulder. The meeting brought together a small group of weather impacts researchers (including both physical and social scientists as well as research program managers) to discuss the potential for and role of an organized and networked weather impacts community, to provide insight into this apparent paradox, and to suggest a future course of action for the development of a weather research agenda focused on societal impacts.

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