Storm forecasters receive more tools (Miami Herald story)

[HurricaneJoe22]

Storm forecasters receive more tools

• Researchers will launch three projects – and a fleet of aircraft, including an unmanned drone – intended to improve forecasts of hurricane intensity.

BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com  

When National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read inevitably shows up on TV this summer to discuss a major storm, he can have high confidence in the forecast track map, better known to the rest of us as ‘‘the cone of doom.’’
That’s because scientists have gotten much better at figuring out where storms are going, cutting two-day error margins roughly in half over the last decade. Predicting a hurricane’s power, however, has remained more miss than hit — particularly during that critical phase when a hurricane can go from minor to major in a matter of hours.
‘‘Ninety percent of the time we simply don’t catch the rapid intensification,’’ said Read. ‘‘You miss the fact that it goes up 40 to 50 miles per hour.’’
Beginning next week, hurricane researchers will launch three projects — and a fleet of aircraft, including an unmanned drone capable of monitoring a storm for 16 hours straight — with two goals in mind: Do with intensity forecasting what they’ve done with storm tracks, improving accuracy by 50 percent in a decade, and help pinpoint the mysterious set of factors explaining why some tropical waves fizzle and some form into hurricanes.

‘QUESTIONS’

‘‘We’re trying to get to the bottom of some of these very basic science questions,’’ said Michael Montgomery, a meteorology professor at the Naval Postgraduate School who is leading one of the studies.
The projects were detailed Wednesday during a news conference held by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory on Key Biscayne, the National Science Foundations and NASA are all coordinating on the multiyear effort intended to improve the accuracy and consistency of forecasts and the public’s faith in them.
‘‘A lot of this is not gee-whiz science. It’s very practical science,’’ said Robert Atlas, director of the NOAA laboratory.
The missions, which will run during what are typically the six busiest weeks of the hurricane season, will dispatch a squadron of aircraft to buzz over and through storms and tropical waves. Outfitted with multiple instruments, the aircraft promise to record an unprecedented level of data about hurricanes and send them streaming into computer models used to produce intensity forecasts.
‘‘Rapid intensity change is, of course, our No. 1 problem,’’ said Frank Marks, director of the lab’s hurricane-research division. ‘‘It’s hard to forecast but it’s also hard to understand.’’
In addition to NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter planes typically sent into storms, NASA will add a DC-8 jet that will be based in Fort Lauderdale, a long-range converted WB-57 bomber based in Texas and the G l o b a l H a w k , a n unmanned aircraft that will be based and controlled out of California.

A FIRST

While small drones have been used in storms, this will be the first time one this large and sophisticated will be deployed for hurricane research, Atlas said. With the Global Hawk capable of flying at 65,000 feet, the fleet will be able to take the measure of a developing storm from literally top to bottom.
Laser radar and powerful microwave radiometers also promise the first-ever three-dimensional measures of wind speeds within storms.
Some missions also will focus on the tropical waves that roll off Africa every summer in an effort to better define the precise set of conditions that transform scattered masses of thunderstorms into tropical cyclones. Most waves never make it into storms.
One working hypothesis offered by Montgomery uses an offbeat analogy. He dubs it ‘‘the marsupial theory of tropical cyclogenesis.’’ The theory likens certain tropical waves to the warm and protected environment of a kangaroo’s pouch — a shield from dry air, wind shear and other elements that dissolve most waves.
‘‘The proto-vortex or the baby kangaroo is carried along by the mother wave until it’s ready to be let go as an independent and self-sustaining vortex,’’ he said.
The projects, part of a decade-long NOAA effort to improve intensity and long-range tracking forecasting, began in 2008. Marks hopes the work will begin reaping benefits and honing computer models within five years.

AN EXAMPLE

Hurricane center director Read said it was vital to improve intensity forecasts — and public confidence in them — and pointed to Hurricane Felix in 2007 as an example. As it crossed the Caribbean, Felix blew up from a 100 mph storm into a 165 mph Category 5 monster in less than a day. Computer models projected its winds would reach only 65 mph.
The consequences if such a rapid strengthening happened near landfall could be catastrophic, Read said.
Gulf Coast cities and the Florida Keys are particularly vulnerable, he said. They need at least 48 hours notice to evacuate.
‘‘That’s when you start pulling people,’’ he said. ‘‘If you had to make your decision based on 65 mph, you’re not going to pull the plug.’’

[ColinDelia]

Great news. Intensity forecast accuracy has definitely not kept up with track forecast accuracy.

[solomon25]

Hooray! The more data the better! I hope they will not try and hide this data from the public!