Albion College Mathematics and Computer Science Colloquium



Title:Simulating and Visualizing Supercell Thunderstorms
Speaker:Leigh Orf
Assistant Professor Of Atmospheric Science
Department of Geography
Central Michigan University

Abstract:Supercell thunderstorms are intense, long-lived rotating thunderstormswhich rumble across the heartland of the United States every spring.Because supercells produce the strongest tornadoes, their behavior isa focus of active research. Meteorologists have yet to answer suchfundamental questions such as: How do tornadoes form within a supercell?Why do some supercells produce devastating tornadoes while other do notproduce a tornado at all? The two primary approaches to this problemare observation (including storm chasing) and numerical modeling. I amtaking the modeling approach to investigate the internal workings ofsupercells. In this talk I will present an overview of the predictivemathematical equations which describe the behavior of the atmosphere,how 3D atmospheric models work (with some discussion of parallelprocessing), and the challenges of taking terabytes of binary modeldata and visualizing it in a human-intuitive way.
Location:Norris 109
Date:4/28/2005
Time:4:10 PM



@abstract{MCS:Colloquium:LeighOrf
AssistantProfessorOfAtmosphericScience
DepartmentofGeography
CentralMichiganUniversity:2005:4:28, author = "{Leigh Orf
Assistant Professor Of Atmospheric Science
Department of Geography
Central Michigan University}", title = "{Simulating and Visualizing Supercell Thunderstorms}", address = "{Albion College Mathematics and Computer Science Colloquium}", month = "{28 April}", year = "{2005}" }