From tsunamis to earthquakes, natural disasters cause devastating loss of life and property across the globe, often in places that are least prepared for them.

With major new grant funding, Hans Graber, chairman of the University of Miami’s Division of Applied Marine Physics and co-director of the Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS), is leading a team that will use satellite-based research in the western Pacific Ocean to shore up data on typhoon-related activity in that complicated geographic region.

A $3.75 million grant from the Office of Naval Research is aiding the scientists’ efforts to better forecast the scope, speed, and path of typhoons, or tropical cyclones. This includes super-typhoons, which are about the equivalent of what we might call a Category 6 hurricane, explains Graber.

“By looking into how typhoons react when they encounter major ocean currents, larger waves, topography of islands, and archipelagos in the western Pacific Ocean—and how these factors influence the strengthening of typhoons,” Graber explains, “we hope to be able to provide the in-situ support with advanced air-sea interaction buoys and satellite resources necessary to advance current methods of storm modeling and disaster mitigation.”

Beyond employing multiple satellite censors to gather data globally, an $877,489 Defense University Research Instrumentation Program grant will enable Graber and his colleagues to build air-sea interaction spar (ASIS) and extreme air-sea interaction (EASI) buoys, to be deployed in the path of typhoons for research.