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Minutes
IOOS COMT Puerto Rico/USVI bi-weekly call
Thursday, Feb 13, 1-3 pm ET
Present: Andre van der Westhuysen (PI, minutes), Julio Morell, Aurelio Mercado, Juan Gonzalez,
Joannes Westerink, Jane Smith, Cristina Forbes, Jay Veeramony, Carlos Anselmi, Ernesto Rodriques,
Elizabeth Smith (SURA)
Absent: Jamie Rhome, James Brinkley, Jesse Feyen
1. Household items
a) The team welcomes Jay Veeramony who expressed interest in joining the Puerto Rico testbed
with the Delft3D+SWAN modeling system. Jay’s contributions will be in-kind.
b) Subcontracting has been set up for NHC and NCEP via NOAA internal transfer. External
fund transfer to UND completed. For UPR some minor items are still being taken care of. Liz
mentioned that funds received late in the FY could be carried over to the next FY, by means
of a “no cost extension”.
c) Andre noted that NOAA IT policy prevents federal employees from using data clouds that
have not been officially approved, amongst which Dropbox. Working with the IOOS office,
Liz set up a documents repository for our project on http://testbed.sura.org/node/525.
d) This year’s All Hands meeting will be held at the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate
Prediction (NCWCP) in College Park, MD on Aug 6-7. No travel funding is available, but all
PIs and team members who are able to do so may attend.
2. Review of Rich Signell’s COMT CyberInfrastructure presentation of Jan 30
a) Rich’s presentation PTT has been distributed. Please review the content, but we will revisit
this in detail. At this stage, focus on assessing hardware needs at your institution for model
runs, and work with Andre in case you foresee that additional capacity would be required.
Check also whether THREDDS server capability is available on your machine, to enable the
data exchange described in Rich’s briefing. Juan confirmed that UND has sufficient compute
capacity, as well as a THREDDS server set up. Christina to be given an account on NOAA’s
Zeus research machine. Aurelio has a machine with a 320-core capacity, but requires some IT
maintenance assistance.
b) Liz reiterated that additional computing could be made available through NSF’s XSEDE
(Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment) project.
c) Action: Andre to compile a list of questions on how to get started on the COMT
CyberInfrastructure, to be answered by Rich.
3. Test case selection
Juan and Julio prepared a summary of the various candidates for regional hindcast test cases. Upon
discussion, the following short list of cases was compiled. Cases to be included as funding allows:

Hurricane Hugo (1989): Category 3-4, and a direct hit to Puerto Rico, specifically on the
north shore. Wind gauges at airports, tide gauges. No nearshore wave measurements. See
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Rodríguez et al. (1994). Not sure how runup was measured. Julio to follow up with author.
USGS recorded a high water mark (debris line) map along the north shore. No HWIND fields.

Hurricane George (1998): Category 2. Direct hit to Puerto Rico/USVI, mostly on the east
coast. Wind gauges at airports, tide gauges. No nearshore wave measurements. No HWIND
fields. Hurricane advisory available – can be put in vortex model.

Hurricane Isaac (2012): Tropical Storm. Not a direct hit to island, but full CariCOOS
network of observations available. Impact on S of Puerto Rico/USVI. HWIND fields
available.

Superstorm Sandy (2012): Category 1. Not a direct hit to island, but created strong swells at
Rincon and San Juan from Caribbean Sea and later the Atlantic which could be useful for
assessing wave modeling aspects. HWIND fields available.

Rincon field experiment: Jan-Feb 2013, Extra-tropical event, but can be used for assessing
wave and surge transformation over nearshore reef. Three significant events have been
identified within the field campaign period.
Comments regarding this case selection:
a) Summarizing the above, before 2010 the observational network was sparser, but stronger
storms were recorded. After 2010, the CariCOOS network greatly increased the coverage, but
storm have been weaker in the PR/USVI region. Juan mentioned that data is available on the
Lesser Antilles form 2007 onwards, made available by the NWS through the WMO.
b) Jane commented that we need to ensure that all cases have sufficient sufficiently accurate
wind forcing to drive the hindcast with. This will particularly be an issue for cases before the
year 2000 (e.g. H. George and H. Hugo), since no HWIND products are available before this
date. We also need to pay attention whether analysis (operational, near-realtime) or the more
accurate reanalysis (hindcast) fields are available. Even where HWIND fields are available
they have limited coverage, and will have to be blended onto a larger-scale background wind
field. Andre mentioned that NWS often uses WRF or HWRF fields for this purpose. Joannes
recommended using OceanWeather fields, widely recognized as the most accurate.
c) Ernesto mentioned that they have local WRF model at WFO San Juan with a 5 km resolution,
which can be run in combination with the NASA land model. Also, the NCEP’s NAM has a 3
km nest over Puerto Rico, an archive of which is available going back 2 years (at NCEP).
d) Joannes mentioned that ADCP observations are available around the island, which can be
important for checking model behaviour in terms of land-sea breezes.
e) [Update 02/13/14:] In a subsequent discussion with Jamie Rhome, he expressed concern over
the scope of the project, considering the limited funding. From NHC’s side, their 0.25 person
funding for FY14 would allow only for 1 or possibly 2 storms to be analyzed. He also stated
that including the Jan-Feb 2013 field case goes beyond the intended tropical cyclone
operational context of the project.
Action: All, to discuss a suitable scope for project, considering the available funding.
Next meeting: Thursday, Feb 27, 1-3 pm ET.
References
Rodríguez, R. W., R. M. T. Webb, D. M. Bush, 1994. Another Look at the Impact of Hurricane Hugo on the Shelf and
Coastal Resources of Puerto Rico, U.S.A., J. Coastal Res., Vol. 10, No. 2, 278-296.
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