| Extreme weather monitoring | - Extreme Weather |
- from http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN2531234020080526 26 May 2008
By Jim Loney MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. researchers are ramping up their use of unmanned, remote-controlled airplanes this year to penetrate the heart of Atlantic hurricanes in the hope of learning more about what makes the giant storms tick. But they will be flying the rugged drones from the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados because American aviation authorities won't let them launch the tiny aircraft from U.S. soil out of concern they could endanger other planes. Nonetheless, storm researchers are confident their drones, which resemble hobbyists' model airplanes but can be controlled by satellites, will give them a more complete picture of the core of cyclones than they've ever had before. The drones can fly into the eye of a storm just 300 feet above the sea surface and send back a constant stream of temperature, pressure, wind and humidity readings. "It can get measurements we couldn't get otherwise," said Joe Cione, a research meteorologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "That area of the storm is critical because that's where the maximum winds are. It will give us a better understanding of where the energy is extracted out of the sea." Made by Australia's Aerosonde Pty Ltd. and worth between $50,000 and $80,000, the unmanned aircraft measure just 7-feet long, have a 9-foot (2.7-metre) wingspan, and weigh only 28 pounds (12.7 kg). They are much smaller and less sophisticated than those used by the U.S. military in war zones. Powered by a tiny 24 cc motor and a single propeller, they can fly at about 70 mph (113 kph) and cover an astonishing 2,000 miles on a single 0.66 U.S. gallon (2.5-litre) tank of fuel, Cione said. They are catapulted into flight or launched from a moving vehicle, and are initially flown using a joystick before control is transferred to a laptop and then to satellite. Unlike the manned hurricane hunter aircraft used for years to penetrate cyclones at around 10,000 feet, the Aerosondes will fly a few hundred feet above the ocean, where the critical energy transfer from sea surface to storm occurs. Huge improvement A continuous data stream promises a huge improvement over the sporadic measurements scientists have taken for years using "dropsondes," packages of instruments flung from a plane which take "snapshots" as they fall through the storm. "It's the difference between taking a photograph and taking a movie," Cione said. "You're not going to miss anything." The researchers have dabbled with drones before, starting with Tropical Storm Ophelia in 2005. An unmanned aircraft spent 17.5 hours aloft in a flight into Hurricane Noel last year. This year they are hoping for two to five flights. But for at least this hurricane season -- which starts Saturday and runs for six months -- the drones will explore far from U.S. shores. The Federal Aviation Administration has not given NOAA approval to fly them from U.S. territory. The agency has issued more than 100 approvals for unmanned aircraft on projects ranging from searches for illegal aliens along the U.S. border to wildfire surveillance. But the FAA said it must be sure the drones could be flown safely from a U.S. base into an approaching hurricane, a time when many pilots are moving small planes out of harm's way. "You have a situation where you have a small aircraft that has no real ability to see and avoid other aircraft, transiting an area that might have civilian aircraft in it," FAA spokesman Les Dorr said. Hurricane researchers look forward to the eventual approval of U.S. flights to give them a chance to study hurricanes nearing the coast for signs of the explosive intensity surges scientists find most worrisome. "Once that option's available to us, we'll be all over it," Cione said. "That's in the FAA's camp." Forecasters frankly admit that predicting sudden, rapid intensification is one of their weaknesses. A relatively mild hurricane approaching a crowded shore can become a destructive cyclone with winds over 130 mph (210 kph) after residents have gone to bed, leaving little time to evacuate once they awaken. A better picture of the inner core, the eye wall and especially the energy exchange at the sea surface that fuels hurricanes offers a chance to improve intensity forecasting. "Personally, my feeling is that we can make leaps and bounds -- big, pioneering changes in our understanding of intensity," Cione said. Editing by Eric Beech.
One would certainly not try to follow the tornado using a manned aircraft. From tornado g-torn5.gif
- from Shephard www.uvonline.com 16 Sept. 2005 - Hurricane researchers at the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, Fla., marked a new milestone in hurricane observation, as the first UAV touched down after a 10-hour mission into Tropical Storm Ophelia, which lost its hurricane strength Thursday night. The Aerosonde UAV provided the first-ever detailed observations of the near-surface, high wind hurricane environment, an area often too dangerous for NOAA and U.S. Air Force Reserve manned aircraft to observe directly.
" It's been a long road to get to this point, but it was well worth the wait," said Joe Cione, NOAA hurricane researcher at AOML and the lead scientist on this project. " If we want to improve future forecasts of hurricane intensity change we will need to get continuous low-level observations near the air-sea interface on a regular basis, but manned flights near the surface of the ocean are risky. Remote unmanned aircraft such as the Aerosonde are the only way. " It's been a long road to get to this point, but it was well worth the wait," said Joe Cione, NOAA hurricane researcher at AOML and the lead scientist on this project. " If we want to improve future forecasts of hurricane intensity change we will need to get continuous low-level observations near the air-sea interface on a regular basis, but manned flights near the surface of the ocean are risky. Remote unmanned aircraft such as the Aerosonde are the only way.
NOAA's partners in this effort include the Aerosonde company, which designed and operates the aircraft and NASA Goddard's Wallops Flight Facility , located on Virginia's Eastern Shore, which houses the U.S. base for Aerosonde North America and served as the departure and landing location, for this historic flight. The Aerosonde hurricane project is funded by NASA and NOAA Research, to test this promising new observational tool. " The concept of the Aerosonde as a small, robust unmanned autonomousvehicle, or AUV, arose directly from our need for observations in dangerous areas such as the hurricane surface layer," said Greg Holland, president of Aerosonde North America and one of the Aerosonde originators. " I am particularly grateful to the hard work by Aerosonde staff and the support of NOAA and NASA that has now made this possible." The Aerosonde was launched at about 7:30 a.m. EDT on Friday and returned at about 5:30 p.m. While the successful use of NOAA's WP-3D Orion , its Gulfstream-IV aircraft and the U.S. Air Force Reserve's WC-130H aircraft have been important tools in the arsenal, to understand tropical cyclones, detailed observations of the near-surface hurricane environment have been elusive because of the severe safety risks associated with low level manned flight missions. The main objective of the Aerosonde project addresses this significant observational shortcoming by using the unique long endurance and low-flying attributes of the unmanned Aerosonde observing platform, flying at altitudes as low as 500 feet. Tropical Storm Ophelia provided the perfect test case for using Aerosondes, as it was a minimal hurricane, within flight range of the Wallops Flight Facility. The Aerosonde platform that flew into Ophelia was specially outfitted with sophisticated instruments used in traditional hurricane observation, including instruments such as mounted Global Position System (GPS), drop wind sondes and a satellite communications system that relayed information on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind speed every half second, in real-time. The Aerosonde also carried a downward positioned infrared sensor, that was used to estimate the underlying sea surface temperature. All available data were transmitted, in near-real time, to the NOAA National Hurricane Center and AOML, where the NOAA Hurricane Research Division is located. The environment where the atmosphere meets the sea is critically important in hurricanes, as it is where the ocean's warm water energy is directly transferred to the atmosphere, just above it. The hurricane/ocean interface is also important because it is where the strongest winds in a hurricane are found and is the level at which most citizens live. Observing and ultimately better understanding this region of the storm, is crucial to improve forecasts of hurricane intensity and structure. Enhancing this predictive capability would not only save the U.S. economy billions of dollars but more importantly, it could save many lives. |
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