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[Westley Annis]

Hurricane-hunter planes upgraded with surface sensors
By ELIOT KLEINBERG
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer 
Saturday, March 01, 2008

Researchers who formerly had to guesstimate the power of a hurricane at
ground level, where it counts, now have fitted their hurricane-hunter planes
and other aircraft with sensors that will pin down the critical data.

Planes that fly into and around hurricanes measured wind speeds from the
plane's sensors or from dropped instruments that measure at various
altitudes as they plummet to the ocean.

But such fleeting readings are only snapshots.

As a result, scientists had to estimate wind speeds at the ground.

They can be as much as 70 percent less than they are at 10,000 feet,
National Hurricane Center specialist Jack Beven said Friday.

The stepped frequency microwave radiometer, or SMURF, attached to the wing
of each aircraft detects radiation from sea foam caused by surface winds.

Unlike instrument packages dropped from the plane, these sensors supply a
continuous measurement of surface winds.

The difference of a few dozen miles per hour of wind speed can be critical
in terms of a storm's damage potential.

The radiometer will help give emergency managers a more precise idea of a
storm's strength so they can decide the timing and extent of evacuation
orders and other storm preparations, Beven said from the center, west of
Miami.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has used the sensors on
its two Tampa-based Orion hurricane research planes since 2003.

Starting in 2006, the Air Force's Mississippi-based hurricane-hunter planes
began using the sensors, and NOAA said Friday that they're now operational
in all 10.

Beven said the new sensors also will help scientists better understand the
complex and still mysterious mechanics of hurricanes.

"We're going to see stuff about the hurricane we've never had the
opportunity to see before because we've had no good way to measure it," he
said.