Speaker
Description
Tornadoes are severe weather phenomena characterized by a violently rotating column of air connecting the ground to a parent storm. Within the United States, hundreds of tornadoes occur every year. Despite this, the dynamics of tornado formation and propagation are not particularly well understood, in part due to the challenge of instrumentation. Many existing instruments are in-situ detectors, making deployment in or near an active or developing tornado difficult. Atmospheric muons may present a partial solution to this problem, as their flux has been shown to be affected by local atmospheric conditions, allowing for measurements of atmospheric parameters at a range. While this technique has been used in the past on larger, more stable weather systems, tornadic supercells present a unique challenge due to their transience and relatively small size. This talk explores prospects for remote measurement of the pressure field surrounding tornadic supercells by combining simulation of supercell thunderstorms and cosmic ray showers to quantify the local effect of these storms on the atmospheric muon flux.
