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by Luis M. Farfán, CICESE

Luis M. Farfán is an atmospheric scientist at CICESE (Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada) in Mexico and an active member of Unidata’s community. He is a GEMPAK user, who plans to implement an LDM connection to receive regional-scale information during the summer months.

The weather on the southern Baja California Peninsula (where CICESE is located) is mild and dry most of the year. During the summer, humid air masses that move northward in the eastern Pacific Ocean provide favorable conditions for the development of localized, convective systems that result in rainfall episodes. Eventually, there are tropical cyclones that approach the northwest coast of Mexico. These systems tend to occur late in the summer and, upon landfall, they generate heavy precipitation and strong winds that cause significant property damage to the local population.

During the last 10 years, 17 systems moved over land, and eight of them crossed the peninsula. Prior to the approach of these systems, emergency managers perform activities to prepare the population. Luis has attended several of the most recent planning meetings and assisted the managers: 1) to better understand the storm structure and intensity as well as 2) to make an interpretation of the tracks forecasts provided by the U.S. National Hurricane Center. For this purpose, the analysis of real-time, high-resolution imagery from the GOES satellites is extremely useful.

The 2006 season was very active; three tropical cyclones made landfall in northwestern Mexico. One of them, Hurricane John, became a storm that brought large amounts of rainfall along most of the southern peninsula. The other two systems (Lane and Paul) occurred later in the season and moved across the mainland to cause impact over the state of Sinaloa. In 2007, only one Hurricane (Henriette) made landfall in the eastern Pacific Basin and this was over the southern peninsula. The storm track was across the Gulf of California to make a second landfall over Guaymas, in the mainland state of Sonora.

Luis supports several groups. Among them is a group of security managers of hotels and resorts from Los Cabos, in the peninsula’s southern tip,where most of the landfalling storms can cause significant damage. The managers last met in mid-May 2008, and 72 participants attended a 3-hour seminar on the impact from storms during the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Attendees included representatives from 20 hotels as well as local government officials. Other attendees were firefighters and Red Cross and military personnel.

Additional training has been offered to undergraduate and graduate students from Latin American countries, where capacity building is in the early stages of development. As part of an international research project, a couple of training courses have been offered. These courses are based on the current understanding of tropical cyclones in the Pacific Ocean, and instructors are from Mexico, the United States, Costa Rica, and Cuba. The courses combine lectures and computer-based sessions to analyze case studies with impact in northwestern Mexico. Students use GEMPAK for analysis of storm structure and motion during the occurrence of recent landfall events.

In addition to GEMPAK, Luis will introduce IDV and will increase use of McIDAS during the coming months while initiating the LDM feed. Link to presentation slides from American Geophysical Union Joint Assembly 2008, Earth and Space Science Informatics Session.