A new airplane for the hurricane hunters
If you have a copy of Google Earth, try zooming in to take a look at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona. Included amongst the thousands of retired airplanes in the desert is one lucky 4-engine turboprop P-3 Orion, used by the Navy for anti-submarine warfare. This sword will soon be beaten into a plowshare, for it will serve as NOAA's next weather research aircraft. Stung by criticism that neither of our top hurricane hunter aircraft--the two P-3 Orions operated by NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center (AOC)--were available to fly during 2004's Hurricane Charley, since they were off flying other weather research projects, the government has allocated $11 million to buy a new P-3 for weather research. According to Dr. Jim McFadden, head of science programs for the AOC, the new P-3 will not be used for hurricane work, but instead will be outfitted to do other weather reasearch, such as air pollution projects. This will free up the two current P-3s for the entire hurricane season, so they can concentrate exclusively on hurricane work. No funding has yet been procured to finance the additional staff required by NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center to operate the new P-3, but this funding has been promised by NOAA.
Figure 1. The NOAA P-3 Orion hurricane hunter aircraft. Image credit: NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center.
The new P-3 is scheduled to come on-line in 2008 or 2009, but we could sure use it this hurricane season! Only one P-3 is scheduled to be available for hurricane work. The other P-3 is currently in Standard Depot Level Maintainence (SDLM), a 5-month process the airplanes undergo every seven years, where they are basically gutted down to the frame and rebuilt. As part of this year's SDLM, the P-3 will also be undergoing a Special Structural Inspection (SSI), where every rivet is X-rayed and the entire frame closely inspected for stress cracks caused by the severe turbulence the aircraft flies through. When the P-3 completes SDLM, it will undergo a month-long process to outfit it with special instrumentation to perform air pollution research. The P-3 is scheduled to be ready by August to fly again, and it is slated to spend the peak months of hurricane season--August and September--in Houston for an air pollution field program. Should the other P-3 suffer some crippling mechanical problem that would put it out of hurricane flying action for an extended period, the P-3 in Houston will be summoned to fly hurricanes. This can only happen after a 3-day effort to take all the sentitive air pollution instrumentation off of the airplane, as these instruments cannot survive high turbulence.
Since only one P-3 will be available for the 2006 hurricane season, we'll have only one Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) instrument flying. The SFMR is an airborne remote sensing device that can infer surface wind speeds in a hurricane by looking at the brightness of the sea surface. The SFMR measurements were used heavily by NHC in 2005 to determine how much of the coast needed hurricane and tropical storm warnings. The U.S. Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron C-130 hurricane hunter aircraft are scheduled to receive the SFMR instruments, but this will not happen in time for the 2006 hurricane season, according to Dr. McFadden.
What's interesting about the new P-3 purchase is that no big press release about it was made--at least that I can find. It is strange that an administration concerned about its image after the Katrina disaster wouldn't emphasize its commitment spend more money to help out hurricane reconnaissance. In addition to the new P-3, the administration has also proposed in its 2006 budget to spend $1.4 million to improve hurricane data buoys and operations in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Oceans. Unfortunately, little new money has been approved or promised to fund more hurricane research. While I give the Bush Administration credit for these much-needed expenditures, I believe that the money proposed to fix the ailing buoys might have been better spent funding NOAA's Hurricane Research Division to do more research to improve our poor hurricane intensity forecasts.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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SJ
I like the new Tetris model NOAA is using :D
B
[IMG]http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/gparm/xyrfpr.gif[/IMG]
I have been reading all of this for the last 2hrs now I am all up to date...
I know it is getting close because everybody is back>>>>>Bring on Hurricane Season 2006 we are ready for you I hope...
Taco:0)
and btw last year we had those discussions too and in the end we will see who is right on who not
...............STORMTOP'S KATRINA PREDICTIONS..................
Go here to read STORMTOP'S KATRINA ARCHIVES.
Large numbers of hurricanes in the short term will devalue ocean front property along the low lying areas of the gulf and east coast. Banks will no longer loan to build too low or too close to the sea.
Many people will advocate building hurricane proof houses. While a very good idea, it does not address the long term problems...
Rising global sea levels and land subsidence. It doesnt matter how well built your house is, if you have to have a 20ft levee around it to keep dry, disaster is a (hurricane, levee break, pump failure, terrorist attack, political incompetence) away.
NOLA is an example of how far politicians will go to prove there stupidity, there love of money, and there contempt for there voters.
The lowest lying areas in New Orleans had the lowest property values. This over time was developed in to cheap housing, which typically is rented/bought by people on the lower end of the income scale. The area was too much of an insurance risk for high end development, and Katrina proved it by flooding these areas the worst.
Watch the news now, and they are begging for the people who lived there to move back! If I had lived there I would be insulted.
You want me to move back to a city where...
.The majority of the city is under sea level
.Levees have to protect the city
.The levee board is known for mass corruption.
.Pumps must keep the city dry
.There are good signs there is going to be an increase in the number of major hurricanes
.The city is sinking
.The sea is rising
.The coastal barrier is shrinking
Thats a pretty damning list. NOLA is only the first city on this list, more are comming in the future. Increased hurricanes will prove the levee systems to be futile. Hopefully we will learn to run from the water quickly before spending billions of tax dollars on failures.
In any event, I would like to hereby declare, by the contrarians' invocation of Murphy's law that the upper Texas coast is hereby off limits to hurricanes. I am so overprepared I think I'm starting to feel silly; so it must follow that neither hurricane nor tornado will tresspass near my house this season.
I think it needs one more touch to cinch it in good though. I need to build me a kind of minivan mounted desk-ette so I can operate my home office from the comfort of the emptied out and frozen interior of the minivan. The worst thing about Rita (other than being without power for days) was that it was blistering hot for days after she passed... I'm used to hot, but dang that was aweful.
Here is my take on it.
Large scale weather modification for the benefit of population centers will always fail.
Examples.
Midwest
Using levees to protect farmland from the average floods seems to work. If the flood becomes too severe, there is only moderate loss of crops.
_________
Using levees to protect cities from "century" floods is expensive, proven to fail in adverse conditions, puts populations at unnecessary risk, and causes even worse flooding down stream.
Las Vegas
Low desert humidity levels, make air conditioning cheap and easy. A well watered green lawn is beautiful. Who doesn't want a swimming pool in there back lawn.
_____
Doing the same thing with 100,000 households raises the humidity levels requiring the AC to run more often, requiring more power to be generated per capita.
Both are examples of people managing water poorly. but they learned this after the unexpected consequences. Why does anybody think that building hundreds/thousands of tunnels in the ocean is going to result in anything less then a disaster.
Instead playing the Dr. Evil/James Bond mega machine card, lets do what works.
.Stop building on islands and low lying areas.
.Build houses/building close to the coast to resist at least 100MPH wind loads.
And if you really believe that global warming is human induced and want to spend billions on wacky projects, why not huge carbon sequestering machines that suck CO2 out of the air.
Heh, I had a nutty idea along the same line. For the oceans/atmosphere to loose heat it has to leave the planet. Just build a tube to space and pump water thru it. The latent heat will be directly radiated in to space, there for not 'global' any longer. Anything less is just using a heat sink. Now the oceans are big and it has taken them a long time to warm to there present tempertures from the last ice age, but when you reach the point the lower layers warm you are seriously....
Using the ocean as a wide scale heat sink is just as smart as using the atmosphere as a wide scale carbon sink.
Keeping tune with MichaelSTL , more hurricanes may be a long term benefit to the people who lived along the coast.
Large numbers of hurricanes in the short term will devalue ocean front property along the low lying areas of the gulf and east coast. Banks will no longer loan to build too low or too close to the sea.
ATUALLY THE PRICE WENT UP AFTER KATRINA AND IVAN...now instead of houses we will have STUPID condos like FLORIDA........and guess who is encouraging the sales(insurance company's for HIGER RATES)...after a major hurricane all is new and people want to reinvest...Property in Gulf Shoars After IVAN went sky high..now with room for new blood on the Ms.coast their property is for higher now,what once was houses will be commercial and carry that high front foot price..If you research youy will see property has become WORTH more after a cane
SJ
Please feel free to correct me where I am wrong in my fair and completely objective comparison of STORMTOPS forecasts and the NHC ones.
You know I respect you and consider you a friend and we get along great and you know that you strongly encouraged me to write a detailed rebuttal about why I couldn't understand your conclusions on your webpage and offered to create a webpage for me with my rebuttal so that everyone can compare our two opinions.
What I find so astonishing is that if one reads that webpage objectively as I did, how can they not come to the same conclusion as I easily have about STORMTOPS erroneous forecasts and the TRUTH that the NHC deserves the credit you and too many others, especially himself, are giving to him.
This has zero to do with or shouldn't in any way be based on a personal like or dislike of him or me for that matter.
In reality, the facts speak for themselves and don't need our spin per say for my blog simply presents the comparison in their own words and even begins by giving STORMTOP credit for doing better than the NHC early on.
Thank You
D.J.
Even a blind squirrel will find a nut.
Chaser-Leave it be. Stormtop either had more insight on Katrina then the NHC did or he got lucky and like a previous post said that should all come out in the wash this year. I think ST did base his Katrina judgement on the current weather data at the time, but again none of us have a true way of knowing if it was a geuss or not.
There are folks on here a lot smarter than I would ever dream of being when it comes to where hurricanes are going, etc., but get along with each other...JEEZ!
Twenty-eight days until June 1st....Florida needs rain...I'm sure a TS would help them...no hurricanes please....probably too much too ask...
"I know I kinda got carried away there (what else is new) and your logic is indeed correct about the wobbles resulting often times from interaction with land."
outrocket wrote:
"In all what happens is as the eye nears shore the eye wall interacts with land and the part of the eyewall nearing the shore or on it is slowed by the friction with land(obstacles)..this allows the part of the eyewall over the water to be rotating faster around the eye causing a "hooking effect" which tends to make the east side outrun the west side of the eye wall on land falling hurricanes..that hook would reflect in a eastward looking jog you will see this often...as for Dennis's east wiggle last year that was caused by shear off the yucatan pennisula:)...hope that helps"
Thanks, chaser and outrocket...that's pretty much what I figured...the friction slows the front (North) side of the storm, causing the back (South) side, which is still over water and thus subject to less friction, to "hook" or "pinwheel" around to the East (right).
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