Hurricane+Article



Frank Marks knows hurricanes inside and out. He has spent 36 years and thousands of hours figuring out what makes them tick. Hurricane Matthew recently gave him even more time with a dangerous storm. Marks is a meteorologist. He studies the weather at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He is the director of its Hurricane Research Division. In October, Hurricane Matthew became the first hurricane to touch land in the United States in 11 years. Along with other scientists, Marks flew into the storm for several days and nights. Scientists use their airplane as a huge stethoscope. On the plane, each person sits in front on a screen that shows what the storm is doing in real time. Other screens on the plane show rows of changing numbers. This information comes from the high-tech instruments attached to the outside of the airplane. Information also comes from tubes outside the plane that take samples of air, salt, dust, ice crystals and water drops.

Seeing What's Going On
Meanwhile, the pilot focuses on flying the aircraft. Pilots have to fly in and out of the eye, or center, of the hurricane. As they do, emergency lights and computer messages constantly flash at them. Any one of these warning signs would be enough to make a passenger plane land at the nearest airport. Marks said the team flies in and out of the hurricane to find out what's going inside the storm. Their job is to collect as many observations as they can about the hurricane. This information is sent to the National Hurricane Center in Miami and to a NOAA center in Washington. It is fed into a computer, which predicts what the storm is likely to do. This is why it is so important to actually go inside the hurricane, Marks adds. NOAA can also use information from satellites. These unmanned spacecraft circle around the Earth. However, clouds can make it hard for the satellites to see what's going on.

New Instruments Used In Storm
The storm-chasing airplanes can see inside the clouds with a new instrument called a scatterometer. It measures the reflection, or scattering effect, produced while it is scanning the surface of the Earth. The plane also carries a Doppler radar. This tool gives them three-dimensional snapshot of the wind inside the storm. Marks used a new drone for the first time in a strong storm during Hurricane Matthew. It is called the Coyote. Drones are also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). There is no pilot on a drone. The Coyote can fly in a hurricane for about one and a half hours. It can be flown by a pilot from a laptop on the plane. Hurricane Matthew got a lot of attention from the scientists. While the Coyote flew around inside the storm, another drone, called the Global Hawk, flew 20,000 to 30,000 feet over its head. Meanwhile, a NOAA plane went around the storm in circles. Also, two satellites sent back their own blasts of data from space.

Hurricane Predictions Are Difficult
The big challenge for scientists today is predicting the strength of a storm. NOAA forecasts have gotten better, but there are many things that affect the way a hurricane develops. This makes it difficult to make predictions about what the storm will do next. The result is that storms like Matthew stump many experts. Forecasters have a lot of trouble predicting whether a large hurricane will suddenly get worse, says Adam Sobel. He is a scientist who studies storms and the climate. Matthew became strong very quickly, Sobel said. It started off as a tropical storm. In a little more than a day, however, it grew to a Category 5 hurricane, which is the worst kind. Something similar happened last year in the Pacific Ocean with Tropical Cyclone Patricia. To Sobel, it's not an accident. He thinks these hurricanes are affected by global warming, the heating up of the earth.