[Rain] [Thunderstorm]
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COAST GUARD ANNOUNCER: A powerful storm will begin impacting
the New England offshore Monday.
High winds and high seas expected to accompany the storm.
SCOTT BRAUN: When you think about the population growth
along the coast,
there is a tremendous amount of assets,
particularly homes in the coastal zone,
that are particularly vulnerable to hurricanes.
Over the last few decades
there has been a lot of improvement in the prediction
of storm tracks, but very little improvement
in the prediction of storm intensity.
In particular we are interested in cases of storms that undergo,
what we call, rapid intensification.
PAUL NEWMAN: Well, the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel mission
is dedicated to trying to understand
hurricane intensification.
So whether a hurricane will be a tropical storm,
whether it will be a Category 1
or Category 2 or Category 3 hurricane.
And this is really important
because a category of a hurricane
is the intensity of the winds associated with a hurricane.
So being able to predict
the difference between just a tropical storm,
a Category 1 up to a Category 5 is really, really crucial
to to saving lives
and lessening damage and so forth...
Particularly saving lives.
SCOTT BRAUN: So the HS3 mission is
based out of the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
The intention for the campaign is to have two Global Hawks.
The Global Hawks are really a new aircraft
for doing hurricane studies.
They're both unmanned aircraft designed to fly
at very high altitudes, between 55,000 ft and 65,000 ft
and they have a flight duration of up to 30 hours.
When we did previous hurricane field campaigns
based in a place like Florida,
we'd have to wait for the weather to come to us.
with the Global Hawks we can go to the weather.
JANEL THOMAS: The benefit of HS3 compared to any other hurricane mission
is the fact that we have these planes
able to fly upwards of 24 hours.
And being able to monitor a storm
for that long period of time and getting constant data
we can actually hopefully catch those changes
and intensification formation
rather than some of the data we've had before,
where we can fly for a few hours on the storm
but then we have to return
because our planes can't fly for that long.
So now we have a plane
that will be over the storm getting constant data
and we can really see changes in the storm.
SCOTT BRAUN: There are three main science goals
associated with the project.
One is to look at the role of the large-scale environment,
particularly a feature known as the Saharan Air Layer.
It's a very hot, dry, dusty air mass that comes off of Africa.
And some people argue that it actually helps to form storms
and others argue that it suppresses storms.
Another goal is to look at the inner core processes,
what's happening in the eyewall and rainbands of the storms,
particularly the role of deep thunderstorms
within the hurricane
and whether or not they play an active role
in spinning up the storm circulation.
And then the last goal is to examine the question of
to what extent are these processes predictable.
PAUL NEWMAN: So we are flying our Global Hawks from Wallops
looking at the Atlantic, the Gulf and the Caribbean.
One Global Hawk has what we call an environmental payload,
and it flies over vast areas around a hurricane.
It measures the environment that a hurricane is embedded in.
The second Global Hawk we have,
We use that... we call that the over storm payload.
So instead of sampling the vast area, it goes right in
to look at the eye and the eyewall
in the inner core processes of a hurricane.
PHIL HALL: So it's very, very useful, I think, for the scientists.
They really like this platform
because they can all be on the ground
and getting their data almost real time from the aircraft.
And they can make decisions about the flight.
We can change the flight track,
we can modify our positions based on where the storm is.
So we we actually have a control room on the ground.
We have two of them now.
And it's very exciting with this project.
We have one at Edwards Air Force Base in California
and we have one here at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
So it's basically like a trailer.
It's been specially designed for Global Hawk.
So when we're in the Control Station,
we're just like in a normal cockpit,
except it happens to be on the ground.
PAUL NEWMAN: Now, scientists sit at a separate trailer,
called the Payload Mobile Operations Facility,
We have computers sitting in front of us.
We bring in satellite information,
we bring in forecast information,
so models will forecast where hurricanes, tropical storms,
tropical depressions are moving,
where rain might be located, what wind speeds are...
And that's crucial
for understanding exactly how to direct the plane.
It's a great team between the scientists and the pilots
to actually get the most information you can
out of a flight.
PHIL HALL: So what makes these missions so exciting for us as pilots
is that we're doing something brand new
that's never been done before.
And to be looking at storms in a new way,
operating from a new location...
And we think that the data
that we capture from these missions
will be really useful for hurricane research
And, at the end of the day, this will help people
understand hurricanes and be able to prepare better
for everybody on the coastal areas.
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