A pilotless NASA aircraft was set to fly over Hurricane Earl yesterday, in a scientific first to gather data about the potentially deadly storm front bearing down on the US east coast.
After taking off from Edwards Air Force base in California, the converted Global Hawk drone will use a battery of instruments to study how hurricanes develop into awesome forces of nature.
“This is a real adventure for this airplane,” said Commander Phil Hall, who will control the plane.
PHOTO: EPA/NASA HANDOUT
“Going over a hurricane, for any airplane, is a bit risky, and we are kind of breaking a new frontier with this flight,” he said.
The Global Hawk proved its mettle last week when it overflew Tropical Storm Frank off the coast of Mexico — but with speeds of up to 230kph, Earl is in a different league.
Originally built to take photos for military reconnaissance missions, the aircraft “is not designed for turbulence or for bad weather,” Hall said.
The plane may be fragile, but NASA is expecting a lot from it. The space agency’s three aircraft are part of its Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) hurricane research mission.
The NASA mission aims to learn more about why and how storms gain or lose power, grow into hurricanes or fizzle out to become strong winds, over the course of sometimes only a few hours.
“Certainly there are many good tools already on other airplanes but this one allows us to develop satellite-like instruments,” said Gerry Heymsfield, a NASA research meteorologist.
“We are trying to understand what does lead to the intensification of the storms, because if we can understand some of these processes, we will be allowed to forecast better,” he said.
One key asset of the Global Hawk is that it can stay continuously aloft for 30 hours.
“We can take this airplane from here, in California, to the North Pole, and about 10 hours after, come back here in one flight,” Hall said. “That’s why this aircraft has capabilities that are so interesting to scientists.”
NASA hopes to move the planes’ base soon to the East Coast — closer to where many storms develop over the Atlantic — to make even better use of its long flight time.
The GRIP program will give NASA a better understanding of how sand and dust from Africa’s Sahara desert feed into storms.
“The general theory is that Saharan dust inhibits the formation of storms, but it’s not always the case,” Heymsfield said.
“The big picture is to help improve the forecast. So for the public, it allows us to increase safety and warnings,” Hall said.
Meanwhile, Earl gained more punch yesterday as it churned up the Atlantic, threatening the US East Coast with dangerous winds and large swells and forcing evacuations in North Carolina.
The National Hurricane Center said Earl, a Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity, had strengthened with its top sustained winds of 230kph.
The winds are expected to reach the North Carolina barrier islands yesterday afternoon and gain force during the night, before the storm begins to weakening, the center said.
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