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Harvard Forest Research Project 2024
- Title: The impacts of future hurricanes under climate change
- Principal investigator: Emery Boose (boose@fas.harvard.edu)
- Institution: Harvard Forest
- Primary contact: Emery Boose (boose@fas.harvard.edu)
- Team members: Jonathan Thompson
Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Dávila - Abstract:
Hurricanes are a major natural disturbance in New England and throughout much of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and the Caribbean. This project will use updated versions of the HURRECON (HF446) and EXPOS (HF447) models to explore the impacts of future hurricanes in New England. In previous studies, these models were used to reconstruct actual historical hurricanes in New England since 1620 (HF011) and Puerto Rico since 1851 (HF012) and to estimate the potential impacts of 20th century hurricanes on aboveground forest carbon in New England (HF444). For this study, the National Hurricane Center's database of Atlantic hurricanes since 1851 (HURDAT2) and current assessments by hurricane meteorologists of the possible impacts of climate change on hurricane track, frequency, and intensity will provide the basis for simulating future hurricanes under various climate change scenarios. Results will be used as input to the LANDIS-II model in the Future Scenarios project at Harvard Forest. The goal will be to improve our understanding of how hurricane impacts may change in the future and how these changes may influence long-term forest dynamics and human land use across New England.
