All appointments were effective July 1, 2025.

“I am thrilled to see these seven faculty members recognized with this honor,” said Patricia J. Culligan, the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of Engineering. “This milestone highlights the importance of each faculty member’s contributions to their research field, but also to our college and university.”

“When we’re talking 150, 200-mph winds, with 30-foot waves, you don’t send a boat  and crew out there to collect data,” said David Richter, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences at the University of Notre Dame.

“We can now send drones and other ‘smart’ oceanographic instruments into hurricanes to take measurements in conditions previously considered too extreme to deploy anything.”

Richter is the lead investigator on a $9-million Office of Naval Research (ONR) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant that brings together experts in atmospheric science, oceanography, and physics-informed modeling to improve hurricane intensity forecasts.

Data from the storm’s center will provide crucial insights into the transfer of energy within the hurricane, particularly at the volatile boundary between atmosphere and ocean.

Collaborators on the project include the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron of the United States Air Force Reserve and NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. Their planes, known as “hurricane hunters,” will carry and release some of the team’s autonomous, data-collecting instruments during routine storm missions.

A tube-like device with sensors, a dropsonde, will record a snapshot of wind speed, air pressure, temperature, and humidity on its way from the aircraft to the ocean’s surface. Other air-dropped instruments (profiling floats) will measure water temperature, surface wind and wave height—a key factor in determining surface roughness.

Saildrones, piloted remotely by NOAA researchers, will navigate into the storm’s center to record such metrics as wind speed, air temperature and humidity, atmospheric pressure, currents and waves. Unmanned aircraft will measure the storm’s low-altitude turbulence.

The collected data will help researchers verify the physical processes dominant in such extreme conditions and develop novel simulation strategies for improving forecasts.

“The goal is always to get better at predicting when and where hurricanes are going to strike and how destructive they’ll be when they land,” said Richter. “The more lead time you have to warn or evacuate people, the better.”

Richter’s research team for this project titled SASCWATCH: Study on Air-Sea Coupling with WAves, Turbulence, and Clouds at High winds, includes researchers from Colorado State, Colorado School of Mines, University of Washington, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Texas A&M University, Mississippi State University, and University of Miami.

A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame is developing an integrated wave-surge-ice forecast model to more accurately predict coastal water levels, currents, waves, ice and related flood hazards on Alaska’s coastal floodplains. The team’s work will help Alaskan communities assess threats from a specific storm and determine the potential impact of a flood and evaluate safe evacuation routes.

“The Alaskan coast, an irreplaceable natural and economic resource, encompasses an extensive continental shelf and coastal floodplains,” said Joannes J. Westerink, the Joseph and Nona Ahearn Professor of Computational Science and Henry J. Massman Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at Notre Dame. “Strong winter storms, changing sea ice cover, wind waves and the intricacies of air-sea momentum transfer make predicting water levels and flood-related hazards a challenge.”

Alaska’s changing environment, highlighted by sustained warmth, less and more fragmented sea ice and late ice formation and early ice break-up, is also causing problems, Westerink said. For example, sea ice modulates regional storm surge response and can either mitigate storm surge or greatly enhance it. Sea ice can also effectively damp out wind waves. Correctly simulating this complex physics is particularly critical during winter months when the arctic sees its largest and most intense storms.

Westerink and his team will integrate information on surge and tides; wind waves; and ocean temperatures, salinities, and currents; along with sea ice properties by coupling several existing models. Together these models can better account for the combined processes of the ocean around Alaska, producing more accurate forecasts as part of the integrated Alaska Coastal Ocean Forecast System.

“The linkages and interactions between the four existing models will help us better visualize the impact of storm events,” said Westerink. “Each model focuses on a specific process in the environment and will inform the other models, so we’ll be able to span the entire energy spectrum of the ocean. The combined model physics, together with the implementation of high-resolution unstructured computational meshes in the nearshore and coastal floodplains, will produce highly localized results, giving communities a better picture of an event and helping ensure their safety.”

Westerink, will serve as the principal investigator on this project. Other researchers at Notre Dame who will contribute to the project include Damrongsak Wirasaet, research assistant professor; David Richter, associate professor; Guoming Ling, doctoral research associate; and Mindo Choi, research fellow.

The team also includes researchers from the University of Texas at Austin; The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory; Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan; Alaska Ocean Observing System; Axiom Data Science; NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Prediction; and NOAA’s National Ocean Service — Coast Survey and Development Laboratory.

Project collaborators include the Alaskan Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys and Alaska’s National Weather Service and Weather Forecast Offices. Partners include the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, Western Alaska Land Conservation Cooperative, and Alaska’s NOAA National Weather Service Weather Forecast offices. The project is funded by an Integrated Ocean Observing System, Ocean Technology Transition Project Grant.

Westerink is an affiliated member of Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative.

Originally published by Nina Welding, College of Engineering at engineering.nd.edu on August 20, 2020.