Communications of the ACM
Hurricane Forecasters Turn to New Tools to Predict When Storms Will Rapidly Intensify
Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been wrestling with how they can get a better understanding of what happens inside a storm.
Credit: NOAA/CIRA/RAMMB
Scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are working to gain a better understanding of what happens within a hurricane during periods of rapid intensification.
Their latest experiments involve specialized drones that fly around a hurricane's eye, and plane-mounted radars for measuring wind motion.
NOAA's Frank Marks and colleagues are always honing dynamical and statistical computer models for hurricane forecasts; the former analyzes current atmosphere conditions and calculates their behavior in the immediate future, and the latter analyzes past storm patterns to assess how a hurricane might behave.
The addition of drones is expected to supplement data collected by dropsondes deployed by hurricane hunter aircraft, while Doppler radar and Doppler LiDAR, which can quantify wind motion and potentially record wind-speed data near the eye, could help predict intensification.
From The Washington Post
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Abstracts Copyright © 2019 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA
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