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How drones will help scientists track hurricanes this year | Surviving the Season
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There will be new tools that the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration will be implementing this hurricane season to help better track storms. Related: WESH 2 Hurricane Survival Guide 2024DronesHurricane Hunters will be launching two types of drones this season to give scientists a real-time profile of a storm system. From top levels of a storm all the way down to sea level, those drones gather crucial weather data like temperatures, winds, humidity and even ocean temperatures as the storm hits the water.They also fly through the eyewall to look at the intensity of the storm and can find the storm’s center. More: What is the ‘new cone’ this hurricane season?Joseph Cione, an NOAA lead meteorologist for Emerging Technologies, said finding the storm’s center closer to the ocean surface gives more accurate data, which is crucial in tracking the storm’s path.“That would potentially help with the track and recenter it about a kilometer or two, which may not sound like a lot, but if you’d give that information to the model now, the model re-centers where the track is and moves it there versus where it thought it was,” Cione said.Related: Hurricane KidCast: What’s a hurricane? And more answers to kids’ questionsDrone with videoThese drones are small, weighing three to 27 pounds. This hurricane season NOAA will have a total of 22 drones to gather data. One of them will be equipped with a video camera so it can document its journey and show what it’s like to be INSIDE a hurricane.“We are going to try to put a gimble on it to get video so this could potentially show what the eyewall looks like when you’re flying showing raging seas. It should be spectacular if we could pull it off,” Cione said.Tiny dronesAnother tool NOAA hopes to launch soon: Stream drones. They’re essentially tiny dropsondes that gather information about the storm as it falls.“Each time you go through the storm and penetrate down, you drop 10, then you go on the other side of the eyewall, drop another 10 and then drop more off. So now within a short amount of time, you got 40 or 50 of them circulating and falling in the eyewall all around and going slowly down to the surface and transmitting that data in real-time.” Cione explained.Cione just did the testing of a multi-stream sonde drop in Lakeland and hopes these stream sondes can be used this hurricane season.“We just tested a new system that allows us to drop 50 at once. That allows us to really understand the hurricane better, improve the model, amount of data getting into the models, eventually, we think. It can really supplement what we’re doing below where the plane’s flying.” Cione said.All of these new technologies are crucial in better forecasting the track and intensity of tropical systems.More: Understanding hurricane intensity, damage
There will be new tools that the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration will be implementing this hurricane season to help better track storms.
Related: WESH 2 Hurricane Survival Guide 2024
Drones
Hurricane Hunters will be launching two types of drones this season to give scientists a real-time profile of a storm system. From top levels of a storm all the way down to sea level, those drones gather crucial weather data like temperatures, winds, humidity and even ocean temperatures as the storm hits the water.
They also fly through the eyewall to look at the intensity of the storm and can find the storm’s center.
More: What is the ‘new cone’ this hurricane season?
Joseph Cione, an NOAA lead meteorologist for Emerging Technologies, said finding the storm’s center closer to the ocean surface gives more accurate data, which is crucial in tracking the storm’s path.
“That would potentially help with the track and recenter it about a kilometer or two, which may not sound like a lot, but if you’d give that information to the model now, the model re-centers where the track is and moves it there versus where it thought it was,” Cione said.
Related: Hurricane KidCast: What’s a hurricane? And more answers to kids’ questions
Drone with video
These drones are small, weighing three to 27 pounds. This hurricane season NOAA will have a total of 22 drones to gather data. One of them will be equipped with a video camera so it can document its journey and show what it’s like to be INSIDE a hurricane.
“We are going to try to put a gimble on it to get video so this could potentially show what the eyewall looks like when you’re flying showing raging seas. It should be spectacular if we could pull it off,” Cione said.
Tiny drones
Another tool NOAA hopes to launch soon: Stream drones. They’re essentially tiny dropsondes that gather information about the storm as it falls.
“Each time you go through the storm and penetrate down, you drop 10, then you go on the other side of the eyewall, drop another 10 and then drop more off. So now within a short amount of time, you got 40 or 50 of them circulating and falling in the eyewall all around and going slowly down to the surface and transmitting that data in real-time.” Cione explained.
Cione just did the testing of a multi-stream sonde drop in Lakeland and hopes these stream sondes can be used this hurricane season.
“We just tested a new system that allows us to drop 50 at once. That allows us to really understand the hurricane better, improve the model, amount of data getting into the models, eventually, we think. It can really supplement what we’re doing below where the plane’s flying.” Cione said.
All of these new technologies are crucial in better forecasting the track and intensity of tropical systems.
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