Sep 16, 2008 2:28 pm US/Eastern
New Tech Tools Improving Hurricane Forecasts
Sensors & Drones: Mish Michaels' Reporter's Notebook
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
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Hurricane Ike as it approached Texas.
AP
Back in September of 2003,
I flew into Hurricane Isabel on a C-130 aircraft. The 12 hour mission required a 5 person crew and millions of dollars worth of equipment. Athough the risk is very real, a
Hurricane Hunter aircraft has never gone down in a storm. Still the benefits of improved forecast accuracy clearly outweigh the risk and cost of operations.
The price tag for coastal evacuation is also pricey - $1million per mile. Evacuations also take time, so reliable hurricane track forecasts are essential. We are the only country in the world that engages in these types of hurricane recon missions. Cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands in Bangladesh. Super typhoons have hammered Southeast Asia year after year. But these other countries don't have the resources to invest in hurricane surveillance to improve forecasts.
MIT professor Nick Makris hopes his
acoustic hurricane hunter will offer these countries a cheaper alternative. He envisions an array of these sensors dropped in the path of a storm to measure the destructive power of the winds. Each sensor only costs a few thousand dollars, making this monitoring much more economical.
Professor Makris and his grad students are trying to replicate their single hurricane sound data set collected during the passage of Hurricane Gert several years ago. They are working with the Mexican Navy and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to monitor
an island off the west coast of Mexico called Socorro. The island is hit by more hurricanes than any other place on Earth - except this year as they waited with their acoustic device on the ready. So they will attempt to collect more audible hurricane data next season. Still Professor Makris believes the technology is ready to go now.
Unmanned hurricane drones show real promise for hurricane monitoring in the future. These
aerosondes are yet another meteorological tool adapted from wartime technology. Although these small aircraft are attractive as a cheaper, safer and more comprehensive option for collecting hurricane data in the field, their operation introduces a host of flight issues. The FAA has no way of monitoring the location of these tiny aircraft and yet in the wrong place at the wrong time, they could pose a serious risk to commercial aircraft. So the main reason the operational use is many years away is not so much the capability of the technology, but the flight issues surrounding its use.
In the end, hurricane tracking has improved dramatically--by 50% since 1990. However the forecast for hurricane intensity has shown little improvement over that time period. Whether a storm is a Category 1 or a Category 4 makes a huge difference in the eventual destruction. Before Ike made landfall, the forecast had the hurricane increasing from a Category 2 to a Cat 3. It didn't happen. Still, the massive size of Ike resulted in
mass destruction.
When Gustav was a few days out from the New Orleans coast, the forecast was for it to be a Cat 4 at landfall, but it eventually hit the Louisiana coastline as a Cat 2, no more powerful than our own Hurricane Bob.
Intensity is tricky business. But when it comes to hurricane forecasting, it is critical and there is still much room for improvement. Technology will not be enough to do the trick.
Better scientific understanding of hurricane dynamics and air sea interaction is required. Great minds are hard at work on these theoretical problems. Still the reality of our densely populated coast presents a problem that we cannot completely solve. We can get millions of residents out of harms way, but billions and billions in property remain vulnerable to these ocean-born storms.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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