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Tropical storm Orphelia
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.
Aerosonde UAV flies 10 hour mission into tropical storm Ophelia
- from Shephard www.uvonline.com
" 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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