Discipline: Ecology Environmental and Earth Sciences
Subcategory: Climate Change
Whelennis Polanco - City College of New York
Co-Author(s): James Booth and Katie Towey, City College of New York, New York, NY
Precipitation extremes can have very important impacts, and it is not known as to how precipitation extremes might change with global warming. New York City is located in the mid-latitude region where there are specific storms that can cause precipitation extremes, predominantly, hurricanes, extratropical cyclones, and quasi-linear convective systems. These storms preferentially occur during different seasons. This study is important since there are areas in New York City that are below sea level. Therefore, to understand how these different storms relate to precipitation extremes, this study examines NYC precipitation extremes per season. First, NOAA weather station data from January 1979 to December 2014 from the three NYC airports (JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark) will be analyzed to derive the climatology, the counts of non-rain events, and the counts of extreme precipitation events. Next, a multi-station average will be used to compare the top 20 precipitation events that occur in Spring, Summer, and Fall. We hypothesized that these precipitation extremes will be given mostly by tropical and extratropical cyclones. The precipitation strength will be compared as well as the temperature anomalies for each season. Then, using reanalysis, composites of the sea level pressure and temperature fields will be calculated for the top events from each season. Finally, the study shows that Summer has the highest average precipitation among the three. It also shows how organized the precipitation each season is based on the composites.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): This project is supported by the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates Grants #1560050, under the direction of Dr. Reginald A. Blake, Dr. Janet Liou-Mark, and Laura Yuen-Lau and NOAA-CREST CURE program under the direction of Dr. Reza Khanvilbardi and Dr. Shakila Merchant.
Faculty Advisor: James Booth, jbooth@ccny.cuny.edu
Role: Based on the weather station data from NOAA, I found the climatology, anomalies with respect to precipitation and temperature, the counts of non-rain events and the extreme precipitation events. Created the multi-station average and then separated it into Spring, Summer, and Fall seasons and found the top 20 dates for each season.