Transcript:

Hurricane Observation - PilotMusic; Ambience: cockpit air-to-ground transmissions JM: Hurricanes are swirling vortexes, as unpredictable in their movements as they are destructive. Now, researchers are using the ER-2, a high-altitude airplane, to study hurricanes from above. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.DW: "The ER-3 is designed to fly at extremely high altitudes, above 70,000 feet. So, that gives it a perfect vantage point for flying over severe weather that gets to high altitudes, like hurricanes."JM: David Wright is an ER-2 pilot out of Dryden Research Center who has flown missions over hurricanes Dennis and Emily.DW: "The ER2 is more of a remote sensing platform, which means that it has to collect data from above the hurricane. Collecting a lot of the same information that would be collected from airplanes flying through hurricanes. But the advantage of remotely sensing from above the hurricane is that it can gather data throughout the entire profile of hurricane from ocean level all the way to the top of the hurricane, which can be as high as 60,000 or 62,000 feet. Most of our hurricane missions have been flown into the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic. It happens to be a common breeding ground for hurricanes and for tropical storm development. The intent of our was to try to observe the entire life cycle of a hurricane from its very early stages of, say, a tropical depression all the way through its development into a full-scale hurricane. So, the instruments are measuring the entire profile of the hurricane from sea level all the way to the top of the clouds, and those parameters can be used to characterize the hurricane and, hopefully, develop models that will allow scientists to predict not only intensity, but hopefully the path and motion of hurricanes as they develop." JM: We'll hear more about hurricanes in future programs. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation with additional support from NASA. I'm Jim Metzner.