Jessy James A shrill industrial alarm buzzes inside the dimly lit hangar, warning everyone that an 8,400-horsepower machine made of 12 towering yellow fans is about to power up. Normally that’s a cue for everyone to get out of the way, but in hard hats and goggles, Steven Diaz and a half-dozen visiting scientists stand on a turntable, where the paths of the fans converge.
A high-pitched whine gets louder and is quickly overwhelmed by the sound of rushing air. An unseen operator ramps the wind speed up to 30 miles per hour, and gusts whip at their clothes. It holds for a minute. Then the fans power down.
“He’s being conservative with this,” said Diaz, the site operations manager for this laboratory. Indeed, this is a tiny fraction of the power of these fans, which can drive winds up to 157 mph, the threshold for a Category 5 hurricane.
“I don’t think you would be able to stand on the turntable with the fans at full speed,” Diaz said dryly. “It would blow you back.”
The aptly named Wall of Wind at Florida International University in Miami is meant to blow back buildings. The hangar doors on the other side of the fans open out to a grass lot surrounded by netting to catch any stray debris. Here, inside the world’s most powerful hurricane simulator, scientists test structures, from scale models to full-size replicas, against the forces of nature. They inject water into the airflow to mimic downbursts and spray bubbles to track the eddies and currents. They watch with high-speed cameras and monitor pressure sensors to see how well different designs stand up to storms.
Miami is at the water’s edge of understanding exactly how buildings fall apart under hurricanes and how to make them stand up to future storms. Results from labs like the Wall of Wind help officials decide where buildings can be built, what materials they need to use, and even what kinds of roofing nails are required.
The lab is part of a research initiative that emerged in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, a gargantuan storm that walloped South Florida in 1992. At the time, it was the most expensive and most destructive storm to ever hit the US. In response, city, county, and regional officials began updating building codes, while researchers brought a more scientific approach to the changing hazards in the region.
As rising average temperatures alter the realm of what’s possible, researchers are bracing for even more severe scenarios. FIU last year began designing a new lab to simulate winds up to 200 mph and storm surges as high as 20 feet, conditions that could afflict Miami in the future. From there, the process of testing, developing new codes, and deploying them in the real world will begin again.
By 2040, Miami will have sea levels anywhere from 10 to 17 inches above where they were in 2000, though studies this year found that sea levels have already risen around Florida faster than expected. When a cyclone rolls in, a few inches of sea level rise can lead to several more feet of storm surge — and billions of dollars more in damages.
Yet Miami is seeing a construction boom with tower cranes cropping up in thickets amid the high-rises, building taller on the coast’s notoriously soft, water-logged soil. Miami-Dade County recently reported a population decline, but it’s the first drop after decades of intense growth. From 2010 to 2020, the metro region’s population rose by more than 660,000, creating intense demand for offices, stores, hotels, and homes.
Miami’s enduring magnetism in the face of growing risks from climate change has made it a laboratory in its own right, with experiments in how revised building codes, novel construction techniques, and resilient urban design fare in the real world, constrained by money and the practical needs of millions of people. Can Miami truly research, plan, design, and engineer its way through extreme heat, rising seas, and more devastating disasters?
The results of Miami’s experiments in adapting to climate change are critical for the rest of the country. More than 40 percent of the US population lives in a coastal county, and that number is growing. Nearly half of the country’s economic output is in sight of the shore, and without any interventions, the rising seas will displace millions of people. “The risks have been there, and with climate change, they’re going to intensify,” said James Murley, the chief resilience officer for Miami-Dade County. “That’s the same for any major urban area in the world.”
