PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – A pair of scientists best known for devising the complex computer models used to predict a hurricane’s intensity and path are now focusing on another meteorological mystery: the weather in your backyard.

University of Rhode Island professors Lewis Rothstein and Isaac Ginis are lobbying academic and government leaders for a new research center that would improve forecasts for New England communities by examining how large weather systems react to local geography.

Federal researchers said they hope the proposed institute can address decades-old problems with national computer models that can’t account for the local topography and other variables that impact New England weather.

Some of those computer programs analyze regional weather from a grid 48 kilometers across, said David Vallee, the science and operations officer for the National Weather Service in Taunton.

“When you start breaking that down to one or two kilometers, those concepts of the physics fail miserably, and it’s not a simple fix,” he said.

Ginis and Rothstein said the Collaborative Institute for Modeling and Forecasting the Ocean and Atmosphere will focus on analyzing the interaction between the local ocean currents, topography and atmospheric conditions that affect New Englanders.

The University of Rhode Island has offered support, but they still must raise most of the $16.5 million needed to make the center a reality, the professors said. They said they hope to get money from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the state of Rhode Island.

NOAA has not committed any money to the project or had formal discussions regarding it, spokeswoman Theresa Eisenman said.

URI is committed to supporting the program, but it will need federal and state partners, university spokeswoman Linda Acciardo said.

One pressing problem Ginis and Rothstein want to address is the impact of a hurricane on the New England coast.

The region has been spared large-scale destruction from a hurricane for more than five decades, and there have been few opportunities to test how a big storm might accelerate in this area.

“We may wind up behind the eight ball and chasing that hurricane,” Vallee said.

After the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast, Rhode Island authorities began updating hurricane evacuation and emergency plans. One key issue the researchers hope to research is the possible reach of storm surge, or flooding driven by a hurricane’s low pressure and heavy winds.

Ginis said the center would also focus on more accurately predicting the reach of waves in Narragansett Bay during storms.