Tornedos Do Not Immediately Weaken Upon Making Landfall: Movement Speed Determines Maintain Tornedo Intensity
- Media Coverage
Tornadoes are meteorological phenomena that generate localized, violently rotating winds. Approximately 50 tornadoes are confirmed in Japan annually, including those that originate over the ocean (waterspouts). Since many urban areas in Japan are situated on coastal plains, understanding how tornadoes behave after making landfall is crucial for predicting and preventing disasters. A research group led by Hiroki Sato (then a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University; currently a researcher at Nagoya University) and Professor Tetsuya Takemi (Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University) used computer simulations to elucidate the mechanisms behind changes in the intensity and shape of waterspouts after they move onto land. This study reveals that the impact of ground friction on a tornado varies according to the tornado’s speed of movement.
The results of this research “Numerical Simulations of Tornado-Like Vortices Translating toward Rough Surfaces” were published online on 29 July 2026, at 11:00 AM (U.S. Eastern Time) in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, an international academic journal of the American Meteorological Society.
