2024 Hurricane Awareness Webinars

2024 Hurricane Awareness Webinar Series - Southeast and Caribbean Regional Collaboration Team (SECART)

TUESDAY, APRIL 23, at 1pm EST
Title: Hurricane Season: Lessons Learned from the 2023 Hurricane Season and What's New for 2024 (ENGLISH)

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Description: Hurricane season officially starts on June 1st every year. Join this presentation to hear about lessons learned from the 2023 season and what the National Hurricane Center is expecting for the 2024 season.

Speaker Bio: Robbie Berg is the Warning Coordination Meteorologist (WCM) at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida. As WCM, Berg provides Impact-Based Decision Support Services (IDSS) to emergency managers, media, and other partners, both domestically and internationally during tropical weather events. He plans and coordinates NHC’s outreach and training activities, and makes tropical cyclone forecasts during the hurricane season.  In addition, Robbie leads NHC's efforts to infuse social science and risk communication concepts into hurricane forecasting, products and services, and outreach.


FRIDAY, MAY 10, at 1pm EST
Title: Hurricane Season: 2023 Lessons Learned and a 2024 Outlook (SPANISH)

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Description: This webinar will be entirely in Spanish with a similar discussion from our first webinar, with a focus on the US Caribbean and language tools from the NWS for our Spanish-speaking partners.

Speaker Bio: Ernesto Rodriguez, a native of Mayaguez Puerto Rico, has recently been appointed as the Meteorologist-In-Charge at the NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) in San Juan. Ernesto earned a B.S. in Physics with a Minor in Atmospheric Sciences and an M.S. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Puerto Rico. He has been deeply involved in scientific research on weather's impact on public health, tropical meteorology, and modeling of ocean waves, tsunamis, and hurricane storm surges in island environments, leading to the development of applications to support Impact-based Decision Support Services (IDSS) provided by the Weather Forecast Office in San Juan and the improvement of weather forecast procedures.


TUESDAY, MAY 14, at 1pm EST

Title: The power of data synthesis for understanding the effects of coastal hurricanes

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Description: This webinar will focus on the efforts of The HERS (Hurricane Ecosystem Response Synthesis) RCN (Research Coordination Network). The presentation will include rationale for the project, moving past “my system, my storm” case studies, summarizing the efforts so far and what has been learned through data synthesis, and where the research coordination network efforts are headed next.

Speaker Bio: Christopher J. Patrick, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at The Virginia Institute of Marine Science, William & Mary, where he runs the Coastal & Estuarine Ecology Lab and is the Lead PI and Director of The HERS (Hurricane Ecosystem Response Synthesis) RCN (Research Coordination Network). He is also the Director of the Submersed Aquatic Vegetation Restoration & Monitoring Program at VIMS, and lead PI of MarineGEO Virginia. He has a B.S. in Behavior, Evolution, Ecology, and Systematics from the University of Maryland, College Park and a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana. Prior to VIMS, Chris was a Research Scientist at The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (2011-2014), an American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science & Technology Policy Fellow placed with EPA Office of Water/Office of Science & Technology (2014-2015), and an Assistant Professor of Marine Biology at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi (2016-2019) where he developed and directed MarineGEO Texas. With over 45 peer-reviewed publications to his credit, recent relevant papers on the topic of hurricane impacts on coastal systems include papers in Estuaries & Coasts, Science Advances, Bioscience, and Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment.


THURSDAY, MAY 23, at 1pm EST
Title: Planning for the Unplanned: Responding to Marine Debris After Disasters

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Description: Natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis generate large amounts of marine debris that can impact shorelines and waterways, causing hazards to navigation or pollution concerns. This type of debris is difficult to remove and there are often uncertainties regarding agency roles and responsibilities. NOAA's Marine Debris Program has been working to help improve preparedness to these types of events by producing state and territory-specific response guides that can be used to help address challenges associated with disaster generated marine debris.

Speaker Bio: Jessica Conway is a Response Specialist supporting NOAA's Marine Debris Program through science, collaboration, and relationship building with stakeholders across all levels of government. Since 2015, she has been working to develop various tools and resources for coastal communities with the goal of improving preparedness in the response to and recovery from marine debris generated from disasters.