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Circular conditional autoregressive modeling of vector fields
Author(s) -
Modlin Danny,
Fuentes Montserrat,
Reich Brian
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
environmetrics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.68
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-095X
pISSN - 1180-4009
DOI - 10.1002/env.1133
Subject(s) - storm surge , meteorology , wind speed , autoregressive model , storm , flooding (psychology) , landfall , environmental science , climatology , geography , mathematics , geology , statistics , psychology , psychotherapist
As hurricanes approach landfall, there are several hazards for which coastal populations must be prepared. Damaging winds, torrential rains, and tornadoes play havoc with both the coast and inland areas; but, the biggest seaside menace to life and property is the storm surge. Wind fields are used as the primary forcing for the numerical forecasts of the coastal ocean response to hurricane force winds, such as the height of the storm surge and the degree of coastal flooding. Unfortunately, developments in deterministic modeling of these forcings have been hindered by computational expenses. In this paper, we present a multivariate spatial model for vector fields, that we apply to hurricane winds. We parameterize the wind vector at each site in polar coordinates and specify a circular conditional autoregressive model for the vector direction, and a spatial CAR model for speed. We apply our framework for vector fields to hurricane surface wind fields for Hurricane Floyd of 1999 and compare our circular conditional autoregressive model to prior methods that decompose wind speed and direction into its N‐S and W‐E cardinal components. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.