MIAMI – A massive fan roars to life, generating winds powerful enough to strip a roof from its rafters. More than 38,000 gallons of water churn violently as waves slam against the thick acrylic walls of what looks like an oversized aquarium.
This isn’t nature’s fury – it’s science at work in the world’s largest hurricane storm surge simulator.
“There’s no other facility like it in the world,” said Brian Haus, professor of ocean sciences at UM’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, where the tank is located.
At the University of Miami’s SUSTAIN Laboratory, researchers are creating Category 5 hurricanes on demand, leading to breakthrough discoveries that could revolutionize how we protect coastal communities from devastating storms.
Water Is The Biggest Threat
According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, tropical cyclones have caused the most damage of any weather disaster in U.S. history – over $1.5 trillion in total damages since 1980, with an average cost of $23 billion per event.
They’re also the deadliest, claiming 7,211 lives during the same period.
While many people credit a hurricane’s destructive wind as the worst threat, the National Hurricane Center says storm surge is the biggest threat.
“A wave hitting a structure in a hurricane is like getting hit with an SUV or something. And it’s happening every few seconds,” Haus said.
Storm surge can level coastal buildings and create catastrophic flooding miles inland, a threat that becomes even more dangerous when combined with rainfall.
“As storms are wetter now, and of course, Houston, I’m sure you know [Hurricane] Harvey was a very bitter memory,” Haus explains. “That was a lot of rain carried by the storm. Storms tend to be wetter now. I think we’re going to be 15% or something like that.”
Inside the Storm Machine
The SUSTAIN facility (short for SUrge-STructure-Atmosphere INteraction) is an engineering marvel. The 75-foot-long tank houses sophisticated equipment that can recreate the perfect storm on demand.
“This is the ACES tank. It’s a place where we can study the interaction of the air and the water,” Haus told KPRC 2’s Gage Goulding.
The facility’s 1,460-horsepower fan system requires so much energy it needs its own emergency backup generator.
But what makes SUSTAIN truly unique is its array of 12 underwater paddles that can create various wave patterns.
The wind from the fans alone wouldn’t be enough to re-create the damaging storm surge produced by Mother Nature.
However, the paddles allow researchers to bring in the randomness of the ocean surface into the equation.
Building Code Revolution Needed
Despite the known dangers of storm surge, current building codes have a critical weakness.
“There’s building codes if you’re in a storm surge zone. There’s building code for wind. But there’s not building codes for wind on the water in a storm surge zone and what the role the waves play in addition,” Haus explains.
This gap in building regulations leaves coastal structures vulnerable to the combined destructive forces of wind-driven waves and storm surge.
It’s a problem that becomes more urgent as climate change threatens to intensify future hurricanes.
“Well, there’s certainly a way to build structures to withstand Category 5 storm surge,” Haus said. “But the question is, is it affordable, and do people want to live in something that’s elevated by 15 feet and built out of poured concrete? With small windows and all this?”
Recent research from NOAA indicates that changes in the frequency of some types of extremes are leading to billion-dollar disasters, with sea level rise worsening hurricane storm surge flooding.
Breakthrough Research Changing Forecasts
The SUSTAIN Lab’s unique facility allows researchers to study hurricane conditions impossible to measure in nature.
Their findings have already improved hurricane forecasting models nationwide.
“One of the key things that we discovered in this in this facility right here was that the wind, when it blows over the water, if you just look at what it did in light winds, you would think that as the wind got stronger, it would, continue to increase at a certain rate the pushing of the wind on the water,” Haus said. “But what we found from our work here was that as it got to really extreme conditions, where nobody had been able to measure it before, that it actually didn’t quite keep going up as fast, it slowed down. That makes a big difference when you put it into the models that do the forecast.”
This discovery about wind-water interaction is now incorporated into almost all hurricane forecast models, helping meteorologists better predict storm intensity and movement.
This kind of research helps agencies like the National Hurricane Center, NOAA and even local meteorologists like the Storm Tracker 2 team.
Nature-Based Solutions
The lab’s research extends beyond immediate storm impacts.
Scientists are studying innovative coastal protection strategies, including hybrid solutions that combine engineered structures with natural elements like coral reefs and mangroves.
“We’ve done a lot of research on corals, specifically how they help to break wave energy, how they help to dissipate the waves coming in,” Haus said. “Engineers know how to quantify what an underwater breakwater does. You’ve been doing it for decades. They know that you can plug it into this formula. What they didn’t know was if you put corals on there, will you get any additional protection and how much will you get?”
The Hidden Threat of Sea Spray
One surprising discovery from the lab involves sea spray – the water particles that become airborne during storms.
“The amount of spray that’s getting into the air is something that we’ve done, the work we’ve done in this facility has shown that there’s twice as much large spray, which is the ones that are more likely to carry water that evaporates and leaves the salt,” Haus said.
This finding has significant implications for infrastructure maintenance.
Florida Power & Light, the utility company in Florida, as well as other utility companies, must regularly wash salt deposits off coastal power lines to prevent failures.
“This costs millions of dollars. You have to shut the lines down, send out a crew,” said Haus. “They want to know ‘How long can we go?’ If they had a program where they’re doing it every week, can they stretch that to every two weeks?”
Climate Change: Amplifying the Danger
As sea levels rise, storm surge threats increase proportionally.
“Every centimeter of sea level rise is another centimeter that the storm surge is going to be higher,” Haus said.
Additionally, warming oceans are producing wetter, more intense hurricanes.
Sea level rise – which human activity has very likely been the main driver of since at least 1971 – is causing higher coastal inundation levels for tropical cyclones, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
The threat isn’t limited to coastal areas.
Storm surge can create a backup of sorts for rivers and bayous that typically carry heavy rainfall from urban areas.
Water rushes into those waterways in the opposite direction of flow, leaving water nowhere to go but over the banks.
“Scientists are trying to look at compound flooding where you have both this storm surge and fresh water,” said Haus. “As this rain gets worse and the winds and the storm surges can get worse, that together is not a good recipe for low-lying areas like Houston or South Florida.”
Future Protection
Initial testing shows promising results for new protection strategies.
“We can look at how these waves and winds are pushing the water, what that does when it hits a structure or goes over a reef,” Haus said of his research.
Preliminary data suggests certain hybrid reef structures could reduce wave energy by approximately 30%.
The SUSTAIN team is now focusing on understanding the combined effects of wind, waves, and storm surge – research that could lead to more resilient coastal construction and better protection for vulnerable communities.
Looking Ahead
While significant progress has been made in understanding and predicting hurricanes, Haus believes the best discoveries lie ahead.
His team continues to push the boundaries of research, working toward comprehensive solutions that could revolutionize how we build and protect coastal communities.
“We’re working towards that, we’re not quite there yet,” Haus says. “We’ve made a lot of advances, but the best is yet to come.”
The research at SUSTAIN Lab represents a critical step forward in protecting coastal communities from increasingly powerful storms, offering hope for more resilient infrastructure and improved hurricane preparedness in the years ahead.
