STORM
(Isotopes Network of Tropical Tempestology)
STORM is a collaborative research network across Central America, the Gulf of Mexico coast (USA and Mexico), and the Caribbean Sea basin. Our initiative is focused on collecting high-frequency samples (rainfall, groundwater, and surface water) during tropical storm landfalls and passages to understand hydrological processes from precipitation generation to groundwater recharge. Our database is also providing a much-needed benchmark for the interpretation of paleoclimate reconstructions in this climate change ‘hot-spot’. This database (2024) is composed of +13k (non-cyclonic rainfall, surface water, and groundwater) and ~1000 samples corresponding to individual storms between 2016-2023.
Our Story and Goal
This initiative has been partially funded (2016-2021) by multiple national and international grants. In 2022, the National Academies of Science (USA) through the Gulf Research Program funded an Early Career Fellowship in in Environmental Protection and Stewardship to RSM entitled "Baseflow isotope tempestology in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea basins". High-frequency sampling has been conducted in Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica, The Bahamas, and Trinidad & Tobago, among other sites. For example, the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was unprecedented, with 30-named tropical storms (TS), of which 14 impacted the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea basins. However, it has been internationally recognized that there is a historical lack of information related to the interaction of TS synoptic characteristics, moisture transport, and the propagation of isotopically distinct pulses across surface and groundwater reservoirs across this region.
To close this gap, multiple named storms have been monitored since 2016, including Otto (2016), Matthew (2016), Nate (2017), Irma (2017), Maria (2017), Isaias (2020), Nana (2020), Hanna (2020), Eta (2020), Iota (2020), Grace (2021), Olaf (2021), Agatha (2022), Ian (2022), Orlene (2022), Kay (2022), among others. This regional project resulted in a Nature Communications publication in 2019 and a community paper in the Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences Journal.
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Consistently, our isotopic results indicate that the damping or buffering effect observed across surface and groundwater reservoirs during TS incursions is related to the degree of land degradation, resulting in distinct ecohydrological responses in coastal and inland (urban) aquifers. Similarly, our high-frequency and ground-based tracer observations are providing a much-needed benchmark for the interpretation of paleoclimate reconstructions in this climate change ‘hot-spot’. The latter invokes the imperative revision of past Mesoamerican civilization declines due to potentially large and extreme inter-annual climate variability, often followed by rapid disruptions of socio-cultural systems.
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Diagram showing recent (2012–2023) and archived (1984–1995) records of tropical storms (Saffir–Simpson storm
classification) sampled for water isotopes analysis within the North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, Central America, Gulf of Mexico, and Eastern Pacific Ocean regions. Two storms, Olivia and Opal, included sampling (rainfall and vapor) during aircraft reconnaissance missions.
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