http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100201063.html

Drones Expected to Be New Eye Into Little-Seen Part of Hurricanes

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; Page A15

BOCA CHICA KEY, Fla. -- Drones are better known for their role in pursuing
military targets, but scientists here are poised to launch them into the
raging vortexes of hurricanes.

The small, unmanned aircraft will explore the storms at low levels that
are too dangerous for "hurricane hunter" aircraft to probe. Meteorologists
hope the information gathered will provide new details about wind speeds
at the Earth's surface and how a hurricane feeds itself on the warmth of
the ocean.

Five Aerosondes are waiting in Florida for a hurricane to form. The
aircraft will be launched from the roof of a vehicle traveling about 60
mph.

"It's impossible for manned flights to fly at the levels we'd like because
of the safety risks," said Joseph Cione, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's lead scientist on the pilot project. "This is
the portion of the hurricane that we really don't know that much about."

The drones, known as Aerosondes, have a wingspan of 10 feet and can be
launched from an automobile with the aid of a rooftop launcher. The car,
with a launcher strapped to the roof, reaches about 60 mph, at which point
the aircraft is released by a latch.

The planes are remarkably light, but also remarkably sturdy. An Aerosonde
flew into Tropical Storm Ophelia last year, recording temperature,
humidity and wind speeds.

Now the aim is for similar measurements from hurricanes. Five Aerosondes
are waiting here for a hurricane to form. The $300,000 for the project
comes from NOAA and NASA.

"If we lose the aircraft, that is part of the process," said Peter Bale,
an Aerosonde representative.

Despite all the satellite and radar imagery available to scientists, what
happens in the portion of the hurricane nearest the ocean is relatively
undocumented.

The piloted hurricane hunter airplanes typically fly into hurricanes at
10,000 feet up, nearly two miles above the surface, sometimes dropping to
as low as 5,000 feet. The risks rise as the planes descend.

The Aerosonde, by contrast, is expected to be able to drop to 500 feet or
less over the ocean. The data collected are expected to provide immediate
help for meteorologists trying to estimate a hurricane's wind speeds at
the Earth's surface.

In the longer term, the information is also expected to help scientists
better understand the air-sea connection in hurricanes and to make more
accurate predictions of their intensity, one of the most urgent challenges
facing meteorologists today.

While scientists have dramatically improved their understanding of the
movement of hurricanes -- their storm-track forecasts have improved
substantially -- predictions about intensity have lagged.

This season, Tropical Storm Ernesto was forecast to become a hurricane in
Florida. Airports closed. Students in South Florida had two days off. But
Ernesto's predicted fury never materialized -- the feared storm proved to
be a meteorological dud.

The predictions have underestimated storms, too. In 2004, Hurricane
Charley startled scientists when it blossomed from Category 2 to Category
4 in a very short time.

"Why did that happen? Scientifically, we really don't know," Cione said.

While scientists know that hurricanes derive their power from the warmth
of the ocean, what's far less clear are the conditions at the point where
the hurricane touches the ocean, which is where the energy transfer takes
place.

For example, scientists had long assumed that the difference between air
temperatures and ocean temperatures were small -- less than 1 degree
Celsius. But recent research by Cione and others, based on ocean buoys
that just happened to be under a hurricane, showed that the temperature
difference has been two or three times that.

The significance of the temperature difference is "huge," Cione said,
because the amount of energy flowing from the water into the hurricane
partly depends on it. The drones, he hopes, will render more clues about
this portion of the hurricane.

While scientists have reams of satellite and other data collected from
storms, little of it provides even basic information about the nexus of
the air and ocean.

The Aerosondes can stay aloft for as long as 20 hours. Sensors on the wing
will transmit basic meteorological information to the National Hurricane
Center and NOAA's Hurricane Research Division about what is happening at
the stormy surface.

According to a NOAA statement: "Continuous observation of temperature,
moisture, and wind structure of the near-surface hurricane environment has
never been documented in a hurricane."