Hurricane warnings are only effective if people understand them.

A new study by Florida State University faculty in the School of Communication in the College of Communication and Information and the Department of Geography in the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy examined an experimental forecast graphic developed by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) that adds inland tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings to the traditional track-forecast cone, which historically emphasized coastal impacts.

The FSU study found that the new graphic helps nonexperts identify which inland areas are under a hurricane or tropical storm watch. But the updated format, developed by NHC in 2024, didn’t change respondents’ perceptions of risk or their intentions to take protective action. It also didn’t improve their ability to identify regions under warnings. The research was published in the American Meteorological Society journal Weather, Climate, and Society.

“The National Hurricane Center has made a number of thoughtful changes to improve how hurricane information is communicated,” said Assistant Professor Elizabeth Ray, the study’s lead author. “We had a simple question. Do those changes actually help people understand what the graphic is telling them about the risk they face?”

Analyzing public understanding

The researchers surveyed participants in Florida and Georgia using both a traditional hurricane cone graphic and the updated experimental version. Respondents who viewed the inland-enhanced graphic were better able to identify areas under tropical storm or hurricane watches, but that improvement did not translate into higher perceptions of risk or plans to avoid storm danger. One challenge is that people often misunderstand what the familiar “cone of uncertainty” actually represents.

“For years, research has shown that people often mistake a wider cone for a bigger storm,” Ray said. “Our findings suggest that even with an updated graphic, that misconception can be hard to shake.”

Turning data into action

The NHC introduced the updated graphic in 2024 to better communicate inland hazards such as flooding, tornadoes and damaging winds. The revised version adds inland hurricane and tropical storm information to the familiar forecast cone to show that serious hurricane impacts often extend well beyond the coastline.

The researchers emphasized that the findings are not a criticism of NHC’s forecasting, which they describe as highly accurate. Instead, the study focuses on the communication challenge of translating complex scientific information into messages the public can quickly understand and use.

“Our question wasn’t whether the science is good,” said co-author Patrick Merle, professor and director of the School of Communication. “The science is excellent. The question is how we communicate that science so people who aren’t meteorologists understand the risk they’re facing.

If people find information credible but still don’t understand it well enough to take protective action, then communication has fallen short. The goal is to empower people with information they can use to stay safe.”

The researchers said people should not rely on the graphic alone but also seek out local forecasts and information about expected impacts.

“Our findings are a reminder that one graphic can only tell you part of the story,” Ray said. “Don’t rely on the cone alone. Pair it with clear, local information about what impacts to expect and what actions to take. That gives you a fuller picture of what the storm could mean where you live and what to do next.”

The research was supported by an internal Florida State University SEED grant and informed by conversations with NHC, which provided the experimental forecast graphics used in the study. Department of Geography Assistant Professor Bradford Johnson was a co-author of the research. The project is part of a broader line of research on crisis and risk communication being conducted through the College of Communication and Information’s Crisis and Communication Collaborative (C3), co-directed by Ray and Merle.

Visit the School of Communication website for more information about research conducted at the College of Communication and Information.

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Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and Florida State University’s Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response Center have identified how hurricane flooding can impact health long after a storm.

In research published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, the researchers identified the factors that are most likely to create hazardous respiratory conditions inside homes after flooding.

Roof age, prevalence of indoor mold spores and maximum flood depth led to the most new respiratory symptoms among people in the homes the researchers studied. Airflow rates in bathroom exhaust fans, how often people opened their window blinds and the airtightness of the building were also important factors.

“We pay a lot of attention to direct impacts immediately after storms, but hazardous conditions can linger after floodwaters recede,” said Assistant Professor Ebrahim Ahmadisharaf, a study co-author. “Although the respiratory health impacts of flooding are indirect and may emerge gradually, timely intervention offers the best chance for supporting health. We wanted to pinpoint which factors were most harmful, because that tells us where intervention can do the most good.”

Understanding post-flooding impact

The researchers examined residential buildings that were damaged after Hurricane Ida, which made landfall near New Orleans in 2021 before moving through the Northeast US, and Hurricane Ian, which passed through South Florida in 2022. They separated their data geographically into three groups: Louisiana, Northeast US and Central and Southern Florida.

Working with public health researchers, they surveyed people whose homes had been impacted by the two hurricanes. Because flood-related mold exposures and respiratory health effects can persist after major storms, researchers conducted health surveys and mold sampling five to seven months after the hurricanes impacted the study area.

The team combined survey results with home inspections, lab analyses of indoor and outdoor mold spores and flood modeling to develop a comprehensive building-scale database for analyzing the connection between post-hurricane environmental factors and respiratory health. The database contained information for each building with a wide range of potential factors that affect respiratory health, including building properties, human indoor activities, indoor and outdoor mold and flood characteristics.

Why it matters

Although researchers have long known that mold leads to respiratory problems, this study presented a systematic examination of how conditions after flooding can exacerbate the growth of hazardous mold using a more detailed database than previous research.

 “Knowing the factors that are most likely to affect health gives us a guide for how to intervene before health problems begin,” said Professor Yassir AbdelRazig, a study co-author. “We know that resources for investment — for property owners and for outside agencies — are limited. This study gives a framework for what interventions can have the greatest impact.”

The research could help homeowners, health officials, insurance companies and emergency managers understand where health risks are greatest and develop strategies to minimize issues.

Future directions

Although the researchers examined conditions after hurricanes, the same problems can manifest after storms that don’t make headlines. Nuisance flooding, which doesn’t pose a threat to life or cause major property damage, can still lead to water intrusion at homes and prime conditions for mold growth.

Future research could add to the buildings surveyed, offering more robust analyses of the factors that affect respiratory health. A project using a control building without residents could examine the gradual effects of water intrusion over time and give researchers an understanding of how mold develops and affects indoor air quality, Ahmadisharaf said.

“Engineering has a major role to play in improving human health,” he said. “The indoor environments where we spend many hours of our lives are huge drivers of health. This research is about understanding that environment to help improve it.”

Doctoral alumna Maryam Pakdehi and doctoral student Ahmed Suliman were the lead author and co-author on this research, respectively. This study was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Danfoss Faculty and Graduate Student Fellows program, and an Early-Career Research Fellowship from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

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In Florida and across the Caribbean, hurricane season is more than a forecast. It is a reminder that safety, housing and survival are shaped by decisions people make long before a storm arrives.

For Paul Niell, an associate professor in Florida State University’s Department of Art History, those decisions are also questions of history, ecology and cultural knowledge. His research on Indigenous Caribbean architecture points to a timely idea for communities facing stronger storms: Buildings can be designed to work with the environment around them, not apart from it.

“You have to build in such a way that it works with that ecological condition,” Niell said. “And of course, that’s a very complicated problem to work out.”

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Even during a hurricane season expected to be less active, Florida State University experts say Floridians should prepare early, stay alert and avoid focusing too narrowly on storm categories or forecast cones.

During a media briefing Wednesday ahead of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, FSU researchers and emergency management specialists discussed the issues communities continue to face, from rapid coastal growth and rising insurance pressures to the expanding role of artificial intelligence in disaster response.

Here are five key takeaways from the discussion:

1. It only takes one storm

Several experts cautioned against letting seasonal forecasts create a false sense of security.

“It’s the landfalling hurricanes that matter, not the number of hurricanes per season, in terms of human impacts, for the most part,” said Mark Bourassa, a professor in FSU’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and associate director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies. “If it hits you, it’s bad. It’s something that you do have to be aware of the whole time.”

David Merrick, director of FSU’s Emergency Management and Homeland Security Program and the Center for Disaster Risk Policy, said one quiet season does not eliminate the risk of a devastating storm, pointing to the destruction left by Hurricane Andrew when it made landfall in South Florida in 1992.

“Hurricane Andrew was the first storm of that season,” Merrick said. “It does not take 20 storms. It just takes the one.”

2. Being outside the forecast cone does not guarantee safety

Experts also warned residents not to focus too narrowly on a storm’s forecast track.

Merrick noted that dangerous impacts such as tornadoes, flooding and wind damage can occur far outside the center of a storm.

“Those impacts can go a long way inland,” he said. “They can go left and right of the cone.”

He emphasized that communities outside the projected path can still experience significant damage and disruptions. And as a hurricane develops, the forecast track can move, bringing the center of the storm to communities that only expected minor impacts. Bourassa also pointed to warming ocean temperatures as an area researchers are watching closely, particularly along Florida’s Gulf Coast.

“We’re a little bit more nervous about the temperatures rising and seeing intensity changes as the hurricanes come right onshore,” Bourassa said.

3. Florida’s rapid coastal growth is increasing risk

Dennis Smith, planner in residence in FSU’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning, said Florida’s population growth continues to place more people and property in vulnerable coastal areas.

“The issue hasn’t gotten better in the last 30 years,” Smith said. “We have more people who are living in areas that are at the highest risk.”

Smith said communities are increasingly being forced to think beyond individual homes and consider broader infrastructure needs such as drainage systems, roads and public facilities.

“We have a lot more in our built environment than simply our residential structures,” he said.

The discussion also highlighted how insurance availability is intertwined with planning and development decisions.

“Insurance drives housing availability, and so it becomes a planning issue,” Smith said.

4. Resilient construction and mitigation efforts can make a difference

Patricia Born, the Payne H. and Charlotte Hodges Midyette Eminent Scholar in Risk Management and Insurance at FSU’s Herbert Wertheim College of Business, said Florida’s insurance market appears stronger than it did several years ago, partly because of a quieter storm season and improving reinsurance conditions.

But she said long-term stability will depend on reducing losses through mitigation and resilience efforts.

“One way to control insurance costs is to try to control the losses themselves,” Born said.

Newer buildings are often more resilient than older structures, but insurers still face challenges gathering accurate information about homes and upgrades.

“Some houses that are very old have had roofs replaced two or three times, and they may be much more resilient than an insurance company thinks,” Born said.

She said improving data about construction quality, inspections and mitigation measures could help insurers better understand risk and expand coverage options across the state.

5. Artificial intelligence is beginning to change disaster response

FSU researchers also discussed how artificial intelligence and remote sensing technology are beginning to reshape emergency management and disaster recovery efforts.

Merrick said researchers are exploring how AI tools can help emergency managers make faster decisions, improve damage assessments and allocate resources more efficiently after disasters.

“Emergency managers almost universally are like, yes, we want this tool,” Merrick said.

Still, he said the technology remains in an early stage and raises important questions about accuracy and ethics.

“There’s also an almost universal concern about what happens when the answer that the algorithm or the AI gives is wrong,” Merrick said.

Smith said researchers are also studying how drones, LiDAR imagery and AI analysis could help communities identify infrastructure weaknesses before storms strike.

“I think we’re going to see a trend to begin to integrate that into risk assessment and mitigation planning on the front end,” Smith said.

Visit the FSU News website for a full list of FSU hurricane experts who are available to speak with the media.

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The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through Nov. 30, bringing increased potential for destructive storms.

Florida State University faculty are leaders in the study of forecasting, evacuation, insurance and building resilience against hurricanes. They are available to speak with media through the 2026 hurricane season and beyond.

Four faculty members answered questions during a virtual media briefing.

Forecasting, Formation and Tracking

Mark Bourassa, professor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, and associate director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies
mbourassa@fsu.edu , (850) 644-6923
Bourassa uses on-site and remote (aircraft and satellite-based) observations as well as meteorological models to research air-sea interactions and how satellites measure what is happening on Earth’s surface. He is an expert on the network of global meteorological and oceanographic observations that inform forecasts, and the identification of tropical disturbances, which are possible precursors to tropical cyclones. Bourassa is also a team leader for the NASA Ocean Vector Wind Science Team.

Chelsea Nam, assistant professor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science
ccnam@fsu.edu, (850) 644-1787
Nam researches formations and intensification of tropical cyclones and the hazards brought by these storms. She uses radar data from airborne, shipborne and land-based sources to develop high-resolution models tracking cyclones. Nam is a member of the American Meteorological Society Scientific and Technological Activities Commission Committee on Radar Meteorology.

Emily Powell, assistant state climatologist, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies
epowell@coaps.fsu.edu, (850) 644-0719
Powell provides information about the historical and current climate and weather of Florida for application across a range of sectors and industries. Her expertise includes understanding the drivers of seasonal hurricane forecasts, such as the EL Niño/La Niña cycle, providing historical context, and investigating community risks associated with tropical cyclones. Recent projects have focused on historical climate trends and variability, natural hazards and public health risks, and strategies for building community resilience. She also coordinates the Florida Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network (CoCoRaHS), a voluntary-based network of citizen scientists measuring and reporting precipitation from their own backyards.

Community Resilience

Pedro L. Fernández-Cabán, assistant professor, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response (RIDER) Center
plfernandez@eng.famu.fsu.edu , (850) 410-6251
Fernández-Cabán’s research couples laboratory and field experiments to assess the structural performance of civil infrastructure during windstorm events. His recent work focuses on developing state-of-the-art AI and machine learning models to predict hurricane wind fields and their interaction with coastal landscapes. Fernández-Cabán’s research leverages ground-level anemometric datasets collected during landfalling hurricanes and advanced wind tunnel techniques to better model the impact of coastal storms on civil infrastructure.

Katie Kehoe, assistant professor, College of Fine Arts
mkk22f@fsu.edu
Kehoe primarily works in performance and site-specific installations with a focus on natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes. She led a 2024 project that honored the resilience of the rural Florida community of Steinhatchee in the aftermath of hurricanes Idalia and Debby. The project, “Learning from Local Experience to Strengthen Disaster Resilience,” was part of a pilot research initiative that examines how rural communities recover from extreme weather events such as hurricanes.

Paul Niell, associate professor, Department of Art History, College of Fine Arts
pniell@fsu.edu
Niell’s research focuses on the architectural history and cultural landscapes of the Caribbean. Through his scholarship, he has worked closely with indigenous communities to foster conversation about their traditional architecture and construction methods, designed to be resilient against the region’s intense storms. He has taught courses on Caribbean architecture and culture and is available to discuss how historic building practices helped ensure survival for the region’s Native peoples and how we might be able to apply their knowledge to make our communities more resilient to hurricanes today.

Emergency Management

David Merrick, director of the Emergency Management and Homeland Security Program; director of the Center for Disaster Risk Policy
dmerrick@fsu.edu , Office: (850) 644-9961, Cell: (850) 980-7098
Merrick has worked in state emergency management for more than 21 years in roles including planning, external affairs and air operations. He developed and oversees the Emergency Management and Homeland Security Program’s Disaster Incident Research Team, which deploys to disaster impact areas to perform field research on disaster and emergency management. This team has deployed to disasters such as hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Michael, Ian, and Helene to support federal, state and local agencies. His research interests include emergency management planning and policy, remote sensing and unmanned aircraft systems, and information technology in emergency management.

Environmental Law

Shi-Ling Hsu, D’Alemberte Professor, College of Law
shsu@law.fsu.edu , (850) 644-0726
Hsu is an expert in the areas of environmental and natural resource law, economics and property. He has published in a variety of legal journals, co-authored the casebook Ocean and Coastal Resources Law and has appeared on the American Public Media radio show “Marketplace.” Before entering academia, he was a senior attorney and economist for the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C.

Evacuation

Eren Ozguven, associate professor, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, director of the Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response (RIDER) Center
eozguven@eng.famu.fsu.edu , (850) 410-6146
Ozguven directs the Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response Center, which improves the quality of life in Florida and the Southeast by identifying disaster vulnerability, improving infrastructure and investigating ways to minimize negative impacts of natural disasters. His research interests include transportation accessibility, modeling of emergency evacuation operations, artificial intelligence and the simulation of transportation networks. Recent scholarship focuses on the relationships among different infrastructure networks in Florida and how that contributes to disaster preparation.

Maxim A. Dulebenets, associate professor and graduate program director, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering
mdulebenets@eng.famu.fsu.edu , (850) 410-6621
Dulebenets’ research mainly focuses on operations and optimization. His research group has developed efficient algorithms that can be used to schedule large-scale evacuations in preparation for major natural hazards. His models capture realistic features of emergency evacuation planning, including potential impacts of evacuation settings on evacuees themselves. His recent studies propose new types of optimization models and solution algorithms for emergency evacuation planning under pandemic settings, considering a higher risk of virus spread in overcrowded emergency shelters. 

Risk and Insurance

Patricia Born, Payne H. & Charlotte Hodges Midyette Eminent Scholar in Risk Management & Insurance, Herbert Wertheim College of Business
pborn@wertheim.fsu.edu, (850) 644-7884
Born studies the insurance market structure and performance, professional liability, health insurance and the management of catastrophic risks, such as hurricanes and other natural disasters. She is a past president of the American Risk and Insurance Association and the Risk Theory Society.

Charles Nyce, Dr. William T. Hold Professor of Risk Management and Insurance and chair of the Risk Management/Insurance, Real Estate & Legal Studies Department, Herbert Wertheim College of Business
cnyce@wertheim.fsu.edu , (850) 645-8392
Nyce’s research focuses on catastrophic risk financing. He has written numerous articles on risk management and insurance topics, including title insurance, enterprise risk management, predictive analytics and natural hazards.

Public Health

Chris Uejio, professor, Department of Geography, College of Social Sciences and Public Policy
cuejio@fsu.edu
Uejio studies how the physical environment influences human health and well-being. His recent research includes investigations of tropical cyclones, extreme heat and health. Uejio has been quoted in the Orlando Sentinel, Tampa Bay Times, Wall Street Journal, Science Friday and other news outlets about public health issues, including heat waves and hurricanes.

Urban Planning

Dennis Smith, planner in residence, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, College of Social Sciences and Public Policy
djsmith3@fsu.edu
Smith is the director of the Mark & Marianne Barnebey Planning & Development Lab, which uses the academic and professional resources of Florida State University to connect with public and private partners to provide capacity and innovative planning for the sustainable growth and long-term viability of Florida communities. His work has focused on risks to the built environment, including projects for resiliency, transportation modeling, evacuation planning for high-risk areas and vulnerability assessment. He has extensive experience managing state and federal programs and a thorough knowledge of laws relating to land use, transportation and disaster recovery.

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By Olivia Sanchez

With the Atlantic hurricane season underway, Florida State University has several experts who specialize in industry-leading research related to these natural disasters.

Mark Bourassa is a professor of Meteorology in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, the associate director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) and a member of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute. These groups aim to enhance our understanding of air and sea interaction and their consequences on the Earth, atmosphere, cryosphere and ocean systems.

Bourassa’s research interests include air/sea interaction, remote sensing related to air and sea interaction and precipitation and data fusion. His expertise is the transfer of energy and momentum between the ocean and the atmosphere and remote sensing, particularly of surface winds.

1. What impressions do you have of the NOAA’s hurricane guidance for 2025? 

The NOAA’s forecast (60% chance of above normal activity; 30% chance of normal; 10% chance of below normal) seems reasonable. This can be interpreted as expecting a season that will be a little more active than usual. There is a wide range of activity in ‘normal’ and above ‘average.’ The number of storms is probably not the statistic that impacts people.  What matters is where storms go and how strong they are at the time they hit. There are also more distant impacts associated with rain, flooding, waves and tornadoes. These details are beyond our ability to forecast, which is why the number of storms is discussed. 

2. What are the biggest challenges in forecasting rapid intensification and why is it still so difficult to predict? 

These questions are difficult to answer because the biggest problem is often that experts haven’t been able to identify what is causing the problem. That was true for rapid intensification until recently. In this case, our recent collaborative research (Yang et al, 2024, 2025) indicates that one of the big problems is modeling how sea spray modifies the transfer of energy from the ocean to the atmosphere. Hurricane winds rip many tiny droplets of sea water off the waves. Evaporation of these drops changes the amount of energy that is transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere. The energy to power a tropical cyclone is largely provided by condensing water vapor when rising air cools. The rate of this release of energy depends on how fast the air rises and how high it is, which depends on how much the ocean warms the air.

Warmer air is lighter than the surrounding air. This situation makes it more buoyant and causes it to rise. Our work indicates that sea spray increases this rate of heating. It is like making the tropical cyclone’s engine run faster, releasing more energy from water vapor. The rising air must be replaced by air flowing into the storm near the surface, which increases the rate warm moist air moves into the eyewall, which also increases the supply of energy to the storm.

Our work makes big improvements in our model’s ability to capture rapid changes in hurricane intensity. We’ve shown that one of the key missing details is how sea spray causes increased vertical motion and inflow of surface winds.

Other factors must also be important and remain to be identified. For about 25% of rapid intensification cases, adding sea spray to the model physics is only a minor improvement and errors in intensity remain large. There must be additional physical considerations we are still missing.

3. Can you explain the limitations of satellite sensors in capturing near-surface wind variability during severe storms and what advancements are on the horizon? 

The issues differ depending on the technology used to observe surface winds. Some explanations include:

1. 1. We either can or can’t see through rain.
   2. If we can see through rain, we need longer radar wavelengths and are usually limited in resolution unless the satellite has a bigger and more expensive antenna.
   3. There are techniques that provide high resolution winds and can see through rain, with the caveat that directions are less accurate. The other problem with this technology is that it doesn’t cover much of the ocean surface.

In summary, we’d like to see through rain, have high resolution and have frequent coverage of the storms. Different approaches can give us two of these three goals, but at this time we can’t get all three.

4. What role does the global oceanographic and meteorological observation network play in improving short- and long-term hurricane forecasts? 

The forecasts for seasons are highly dependent on the water temperature and global wind patterns. The global observing system is great for identifying large spatial scale variations, which are linked to patterns of surface temperature, wind, moisture, clouds and precipitation – all of which can be observed. These observations can be combined to get a good estimate of the large-scale wind patterns, which tend to persist for weeks to months.

Forecasts for individual storm tracks are highly dependent on the larger scale wind pattern through which tropical cyclones move and the position of fronts and high pressure systems. Weather satellites are great at providing this data. Intensity is influenced by how slow or fast the storm moves over warm water, the depth and temperature of warm water, interaction with land and other weather systems (e.g., fronts), and the amount of moisture at mid-levels. The combination of the oceanographic observing system and the meteorological observing system is helpful for measuring these characteristics along the storm’s projected path.

5. In your experience training meteorologists or emergency personnel, what are the most common misconceptions or knowledge gaps about hurricanes? 

One of the most common misconceptions is the size of a hurricane. A lot of people think of the eye of a hurricane when thinking about scale. People realize that these are big systems, but they don’t appreciate how big. There is a tendency to underestimate the size by about a factor of 10. Most people understand that track forecasts have become awesome, but they don’t appreciate that a small change in track has huge consequences for people with property.

A lot of people don’t appreciate how fast a hurricane can change intensity in a way that is not in the forecast. These rapid changes are much harder to model than the better forecast slower changes. Our modeling improvements are not yet operational. Most people don’t appreciate how much productivity is lost preparing for storms well before they make landfall. Poorer forecasts would cause much greater loss in productivity and a greater loss of life.

People tend to think of eyewalls as cylinders (straight up and down), but they are tilted. It is easy to look at radar images of the eyewall well above the ground and be mistaken about the location of the eyewall’s surface winds.

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Hurricanes are massive, complex systems that can span hundreds of miles as they swirl around the low pressure of the storm’s eye. In such a complicated situation, predicting how powerful a hurricane will grow is a difficult undertaking.

A new collaboration between researchers in South Korea and Florida State University is improving hurricane forecasting by incorporating the effects of sea spray into the models that predict hurricane behavior. The work was published in Environmental Research Letters.

“We know forecasts predicting hurricane tracks are pretty good most of the time, but the intensity forecasts have traditionally not been as good, and we’re trying to figure out why,” said Mark Bourassa, a professor in the FSU Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and paper co-author.

As hurricanes churn through the ocean, wind and waves at the surface disperse droplets of water into the air, known as sea spray. As these droplets of warm water evaporate, they cool while releasing heat and moisture into the atmosphere near the ocean surface. The heat lifts more moisture-laden air, a process that powers hurricanes.

The researchers looked at data from probes dropped by hurricane hunter airplanes and found there was a lot more thermal energy being transferred from the ocean into the air than they expected. That pointed to a potentially overlooked feature that was influencing storm intensity.

Previous studies into the role of sea spray in hurricane intensification relied on proxy measurements such as wind speed to approximate how sea spray reduces drag, which also increases the intensity in modeled storms. But those simplifications didn’t capture how spray increased the energy fueling storms, especially for wind speeds greater than 20 meters per second.

The weather model used by South Korean and FSU researchers included a wave model to provide greater accuracy for sea spray production and incorporated changes in the heat and moisture transferred to the atmosphere.

“It’s an amazing amount of energy that we’ve been missing in these storms,” Bourassa said. “When we incorporated data showing how sea spray changes the flow of heat and moisture in a storm, we found that intensity forecasts were remarkably better than they were when we ran the same model without that single change.”

To validate their findings, the research team analyzed four major Atlantic Ocean hurricanes — Ida (2021), Harvey (2017), Michael (2018), and Ian (2022) — which caused significant damage in the United States. With the help of colleagues in Korea, they also examined four Pacific Ocean typhoons.

Existing science is typically reliable at predicting a hurricane’s path, but meteorologists want to refine their modeling to better understand and forecast the intensity of storms. This research suggests that operational models could be modified to provide better intensity forecasts.

Future research motivated by this paper could focus on rapid intensification of storms, Bourassa said, helping to add another piece to the complicated puzzle that is hurricane forecasting.

Research team members from FSU were Chaehyeon Chelsea Nam, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science; DW Shin and Steven Cocke, research scientists at the FSU Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies; Sinil Yang of the APEC Climate Center, Republic of Korea; Dong-Hyun Cha of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology; and Baek-Min Kim of Pukyong National University, Republic of Korea.

This research was supported by the Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Agency, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of Korea, the Korea Environment Industry & Technology Institute, Korea Ministry of Environment, the National Research Foundation of Korea, and the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program.

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Atlantic hurricane season is nearing its peak, raising alarms for mold outbreaks triggered by flooding and the respiratory health issues to follow.

Ebrahim Ahmadisharaf, an assistant professor and researcher at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering’s Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response Center, or RIDER, is shedding new light on the indirect effects of flood damage on residential buildings and human health.

His interdisciplinary team of hydrologic engineers and public health scientists explores how flooding after hurricanes contributes to mold growth in homes and the subsequent impact on indoor air quality and respiratory health.

Their research focuses on water-damaged homes in flood-stricken areas such as New Orleans, Baton Rouge, South Florida, New York City and Philadelphia, where they analyzed mold proliferation and its connection to respiratory illnesses. The team aims to uncover the key factors driving mold growth, such as flood depth and roof age, and their correlation with asthma and allergy symptoms. This study addresses critical knowledge gaps and offers insights into the long-term health effects of living in flood-impacted environments.

What is the relationship between flooding and mold growth?
Numerous studies have focused on predicting floods and assessing their impact on fatalities and structural damage. However, when it comes to the indirect and less visible consequences, like mold growth, there has been little quantitative research — particularly in measuring total mold spore counts.

Flood-related conditions, such as excessive dampness and humidity, create an ideal environment for mold to thrive, which can lead to significant respiratory health issues. Mold-related problems don’t necessarily require standing water in the building. Depending on the building materials, water can remain trapped, fostering conditions for mold growth. In severe cases, invisible mold can develop, which often goes unnoticed by residents.

We aimed to collect data on the factors that contribute to mold proliferation and assess its impact on respiratory health, particularly asthma and allergies. Our goal was to predict these outcomes using machine learning algorithms.

What is invisible mold, and how does it pose a threat without people realizing it?
When most people think of mold, they picture black spots on walls or around exhaust fans. But there are other types of mold that are invisible to the naked eye. These unseen mold spores can cause the same respiratory issues as visible mold, and in some cases, may lead to more prolonged health problems.

The challenge with invisible mold is that people often don’t realize it’s present, so they don’t take steps to remediate it. As part of our study on the mid-term impacts of mold growth, we interviewed residents to understand what actions they had — or hadn’t — taken to address mold and whether they had experienced any respiratory issues. This gave us insight into the long-term health effects associated with invisible mold.

How did you incorporate machine learning into your research, particularly with modeling work?
We employed a range of methods to gather data. First, we conducted online questionnaires and surveys to gather information on building characteristics, such as roof conditions and ventilation systems. Then, we visited the properties and collected indoor and outdoor air and dust samples.

After analyzing the samples in the lab, we identified more than 40 species of mold. In addition, we used hindcast data related to flood conditions, along with machine learning algorithms and public domain datasets. Before combining all the data, we took steps to validate it. For instance, we cross-referenced our flood models with stream gauge data and high-water marks.

We also gathered details from participants about the flood levels around their homes and how long the water remained. We then fed this data into machine learning models to predict total mold spore counts based on variables such as roof age, flood depth and ventilation.

The algorithms revealed key factors influencing mold growth, which we used to predict mold levels under certain conditions. In addition to our mold growth model, we developed a classification model to predict asthma exacerbations. By analyzing participant data on symptoms and hospital visits post-flood, the model helped identify the conditions under which asthma symptoms worsened. These insights can inform remediation and prevention efforts.

What is the concept of hindcasting, and how does it fit into this study?
Hindcasting is similar to forecasting but works in reverse — it recreates past events using models and historical data to predict future scenarios. It’s especially useful when we don’t have flood data from every affected building. Hindcasting helps fill those gaps and enhances the spatial coverage, providing insights into how flooding evolved, the maximum flood depth, how long the water remained and how it receded. This technique supports both historical analyses and future flood predictions, offering more complete temporal coverage across different locations.

What does the future of this research look like?
Several avenues could expand our current research. In terms of flood modeling, high-resolution models at the building level could enhance the accuracy of flood depth predictions. For flood characteristics, gathering more detailed data on flood duration, velocity and rate of rise would help validate models and improve the reliability of our conclusions. To better understand flood impacts, we could track data over time for each affected building, capturing both immediate and long-term effects.

While our current focus is on extreme hurricane-related flooding, smaller flood events, such as those caused by heavy rainfall, should also be studied. In some cases, minor flooding could have an equal or even greater impact due to prolonged wetness and saturated conditions from back-to-back storms.

More research in this area would help educate communities about flood preparedness for both major and minor events, provide useful insights for building design, and inform occupational health science and public health policy. We hope that our research efforts will generate more awareness about indoor mold proliferation and the impacts on respiratory health, especially in communities at high risk for allergy and asthma symptoms.

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Wind from a category 1 hurricane can reach nearly 100 mph, fast enough to damage homes and snap tree branches. Category 5 hurricane winds exceed 157 mph and can destroy buildings, leaving areas uninhabitable for weeks or months.

FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Assistant Professor Pedro Fernández-Cabán researches better methods for quantifying the intensity of hurricane winds and how those winds affect the structural integrity of buildings.

He explained the challenges of his research, how scientists are using artificial intelligence to better understand wind fields and how this work benefits the public:

What is the focus of your research?
My work integrates field experiments and wind tunnel modeling to better understand extreme hurricane winds and quantify their impact on civil infrastructure. Most of my focus is on buildings, which could be residential, or other types of low-rise or high-rise structures.

My group collaborates with multi-institutional research teams that go out to the field and try to capture what the wind field is doing at ground-level, then we bring that knowledge to the lab and replicate that with scaled building models in the wind tunnel. For example, we characterize the wind pressure on the surface of a building. The research we do is intended to influence future design standards and building codes used by civil and structural engineers.

What is the most common wind-induced damage that affects residential buildings?
In the case of low-rise residential construction, roof failure is a common wind-related damage that we observe. These roof failures are a result of high suction forces on roof systems and usually develop near roof edges or corners. We see a lot of that damage in coastal communities, where wind speeds and hurricane wind fields are more intense.

Are engineers able to infer the intensity of hurricane winds based on damage to structures?
That is one of the challenges we have, especially for some of my colleagues who are involved in post-disaster or post-storm damage surveys. Hurricane-induced damage is not uniform. It’s location dependent. We can see the structural damage, but we have a difficult time recreating localized wind hazard conditions.

It’s hard to link the damage that we see in structures to the wind field at the time of failure. That is a consequence of limited near-ground observations. During a hurricane, power often goes out and it’s hard to keep weather stations functional. Because of that, we have very little information about what the wind field is doing near the ground.

That is a challenge we are working on right now in our research, to be able to better infer or predict what the wind field was, with regards to intensity, direction and turbulence, and then relate that to some of the observed damage that we see.

Are some coastal communities more susceptible to wind related damage than others?
One of the main parameters we look at when we’re trying to quantify near-surface wind fields is terrain. If you’re assessing a particular building, you would look at the upwind terrain, which will dictate how intense the wind is going to be or what turbulence the building may experience.

If you’re in a coastal community and you have upstream terrain that is relatively smooth with very little obstructions, you would expect higher wind speeds. If you have communities that are very close to the shoreline, for example, you’re in what we call marine exposure, where wind speeds are typically more intense. On the other hand, if you’re in more built-up suburban terrain, the obstruction from trees and other surrounding buildings tend to slow down the wind.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities in your field that could become more relevant in the next five to 10 years?
My research group and other colleagues within the wind engineering community are trying to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning to help us understand what is happening with the near-surface wind field during hurricanes.

There are not a lot of observations out there, but tools like machine learning can use that limited data to fill in the gaps in regions where we don’t have either reliable observations or stations equipped with high-resolution instrumentation that would give us an idea of the intensity, direction and the turbulent properties of a wind field.

We also use terrain data from satellite images near the coastline and try to integrate machine learning algorithms that can tell us the effect of that local terrain and topography on the wind field for a community that might be vulnerable to hurricane winds.

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Let’s set the scene: Nearly 6,000 Florida State University students have just finished moving into their campus residences and more than 43,000 students in Tallahassee are excited to kick off a new school year. But, as fate would have it, Hurricane Idalia makes an uninvited appearance, disrupting everyone’s plans. 

Idalia, born from a low-pressure area that hitchhiked its way from the eastern Pacific to the western Caribbean, steadily grew during the week from a whisper of a storm to a historic raging Category 4 hurricane Florida won’t soon forget. 

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Record-breaking high temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean combined with El Niño spell uncertainty for the Atlantic hurricane season. 

El Niño, known to reduce hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin, developed early this summer.  

With the conflicting factors of El Nino in the Pacific leading to fewer hurricanes and warm Atlantic Ocean temperatures favoring hurricane development, seasonal forecasts are for near-normal activity with lower confidence than other years.

Around Florida, coastal ocean temperatures have risen to the mid-90s for some parts of the Florida Keys and the southwest part of the state.  

In addition to threatening coral reefs, seagrass and other critical components of the ecosystem, warmer coastal waters provide heat and moisture that can fuel hurricane intensity.  

David Zierden is a research associate at Florida State University’s Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies and serves as Florida’s state climatologist. He is available to speak to the media about El Niño, extreme temperatures and their impacts. 

David Zierden, research associate, FSU Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies; state climatologist at the Florida Climate Center 

(850) 644-3417; dzierden@fsu.edu 

Zierden studies climate variability and how it affects agriculture, forestry, water and other industries and resources in the state. He has testified before a congressional committee about predicting and monitoring El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, and its impacts. 

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Years after Hurricane Michael devastated Florida’s Gulf Coast, residents of that area are still struggling to overcome the trauma of the Category 5 storm. 

In a recent study, FSU researchers found that trauma and a host of psychosocial and physical challenges caused by Hurricane Michael are disproportionately affecting the region’s Black communities.  

“These are already underserved communities, and when a disaster like Michael hits, it exacerbates those pre-existing disparities in wealth and resources,” said Associate Professor of Nursing Sabrina Dickey, the study’s lead author. “There is the initial trauma they experience of the disaster —  maybe they’ve lost loved ones or their possessions — but there are a host of issues that persist.” 

A Category 5 hurricane when it slammed into Florida’s Gulf Coast in October 2018, Michael caused an estimated $25 billion in property damage and displaced more than 375,000 people.  

The study was published in Natural Hazards Review, the official Journal of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Researchers found participants experienced a multitude of mental health issues, including significant feelings of fear, loss and hopelessness, while also exhibiting distrust in systems designed to provide relief. 

“After a natural disaster, which causes trauma, there is often a new normal that exists,” Dickey said. “We discussed the need for continued resources to assist with coping afterward, which will assist with these communities regaining some sense of normalcy.” 

Among the biggest issues for resiliency — and one that creates many others — is homelessness. Michael is estimated to have displaced 20,000 people in hard-hit Bay County, where the study was conducted. 

The study’s interdisciplinary research team also included Katrina Boone of the FSU College of Social Work and Arthur Raney of the FSU College of Communication and Information, along with Celeste Hawkins and Marilyn Wedenoja of Eastern Michigan University College of Health and Human Sciences.

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