The little beachfront house took quite a pounding. Towering swells crashed into its wooden stilts, while brutal winds, some exceeding 130 miles per hour, pummeled its outer walls, shaking the home so violently it looked as if it would topple at any second. But remarkably, it stood firm, at least on this day. Tomorrow, and the next day, it would endure much harsher conditions—spawned not by nature but with the flip of a switch.

Tropical cyclones are a regular weather occurrence inside the University of Miami’s Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. SUSTAIN (SUrge-STructure-Atmosphere INteraction) lab, where scientists can tinker with the controls of a 75-foot-long, 38,000-gallon wind-wave tank to simulate everything from a tropical storm to a cyclonic monster with 160-mile-per-hour winds, sea spray, and storm surge. 

“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.

Haus, who co-wrote the grant proposal that helped UM obtain the federal stimulus money to build the tank, is not exaggerating. SUSTAIN, he explained, is unique because of its ability to generate Category 5 wind speeds (157 miles per hour or higher) over water.

And for scientists and students alike, that offers an unmatched immersive learning experience.

By simulating and observing storm conditions in the tank, they hope to solve some of the mysteries of tropical cyclones that have puzzled meteorologists and forecasters for decades—such as why some storms intensify at an incredible rate.

“You can only go so far with theory,” he said. “What you’d really like to do is get some actual observations. But it’s difficult to put sensors in the middle of a major hurricane. The tank provides a way to simulate that process and actually take measurements of the fluxes to refine forecast models.”

During its three years of operation, the tank’s been used in experiments that measure the critical air-sea interaction that plays a major role in fueling tropical cyclones to a study that used ocean-surface drifters that simulate the transport of oil.

And because hurricanes sometimes make landfall on shorelines with high-rise buildings, and with more and more of our coastal regions coming under the threat of rising sea levels caused by climate change, SUSTAIN is also offering a learning experience when it comes to helping engineers and architects design stronger and safer structures located near water.

“But we’re just scratching the surface. We need to attract collaborators, and we’re doing that now,” said Nathan Laxague, a postdoctoral associate in applied marine physics.

SUSTAIN is one part of the $45 million Marine Technology and Life Sciences Seawater Complex on the Rosenstiel School campus. The building’s Marine Life Science Center is home to a National Institutes of Health-funded Aplysia lab, billed as the only facility in the world that cultures and raises sea hares for scientific research in aging, memory, and learning.

Among the research that has been conducted in the center’s many labs: A study on the effect of Prozac on the cardiovascular system of toadfish; an investigation into how damselfish may hold the key to understanding a disease in humans once known as Elephant Man’s Disease for its disfiguring tumors. Damselfish develop tumors similar to how humans are affected by the genetic disorder neurofibromatosis; and an experiment in which artificial DNA was injected into zebrafish to detect harmful algae blooms in aquatic environments.