Seasonal hurricane forecasting using dynamical models to forecast the intensity and frequency in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf regions is vital to those living in the hurricane impact areas. It is estimated that one mile of coastline costs an average of $1 million dollars to evacuate. In terms of dollars, hurricanes are the costliest U.S. natural disaster. The ability to provide in a probabilistic framework hurricane frequencies, intensity and possible impact areas a season in advance would give the local/state and national governments the ability to strategically prepare supplies for loss of basic services such as food, water and electricity and inform the governments on the potential of large loss of life and structural damage with sufficient forewarning.

One of the key factors in fighting forest fires is the ability to predict the spread of the fire. Human experience and empirical spread models provide important tools, but they are not always accurate enough. In particular, they are often inadequate for large, intense wildfires. In the future, however, firefighters might get more reliable, hi-tech help predicting the flames and the smoke.

Understanding the physical conditions in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico is a vital part of understanding almost everything about the Gulf - from the movement of storm systems through the sustainability of its fisheries. But the physical conditions of the water - its temperature, salinity, surface height, and the movement of its waters - are affected by many, many factors and these factors interact in complex ways. The driving forces of rainfall, wind, heat flux, and evaporation are complemented by the input of fresh water from 30 rivers and the large-scale movements of water into and out of the Gulf through the currents running through the Caribbean. And if these effects were not sufficiently complicated in their own right, waters of different salinities have different densities and there are complicated features of layering and mixing that can themselves affect the other measurements.

Officially, acoustics is the science of sound creation and transmission, but in many ways, acoustics is more like an art or engineering. The creation of sound involves a complex interaction of shapes, materials, and energy. We are far from having reliable formulas that can capture the behavior of real-life structures. That's one of the reasons the New York Philharmonic is moving out of the modern, but acoustically unsatisfying, Avery Fisher Hall, and back to the hundred year old Carnegie Hall whose structure adds a glowing warmth and richness to performances.