This is absolutely outrageous. It seems that hurricane research flights using NOAA's two P-3 "hurricane hunter" planes (pictured at left, image courtesy of NOAA) are set to be grounded due to a lack of federal funding. As Jeff Masters observes: "With zero money allocated to fund one of the most important types of hurricane research, one has to wonder--what are NOAA and Congress thinking?"
What indeed. And this even as the latest forecast for the Atlantic in 2007, from Tropical Storm Risk (PDF), is yet again predicting a very active season: "There is a high (~80%) likelihood that activity will be in the top one-third of years historically."
These long range forecasts aren't necessarily reliable; but on the other hand, there's no doubt we will have more bad years soon enough, even if not in 2007. Meanwhile, it's equally obvious that we still have much to learn about hurricanes, an endeavor in which the hi-tech P-3s play a central role. Does it only take one year with no landfalling hurricanes for us to forget that we still don't understand these storms nearly well enough to predict many important things about them, including which disturbances are likely to develop into full fledged storms and when storms will intensify or weaken?
So once again, I am stunned. Apparently airborne reconnaissance using the P-3s will continue in real time, to aid in track forecasting, but research flights are another matter. It seems to me that all senators and members of Congress who represent hurricane-vulnerable states should be probing this immediately.
Meanwhile, although we still have more than three months until the Atlantic hurricane season starts, we'll soon be moving into the peak of the season for the Southern Hemisphere. Things are quiet for the moment, but I'll be blogging if the weather gets interesting.
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I'll bite on this - you aren't giving me enough info to understand what is happening here:
"Apparently airborne reconnaissance using the P-3s will continue in real time, to aid in track forecasting, but research flights are another matter."
This sounds like they are NOT being grounded, just only used for realtime data gathering. How is this different from "research flights" and what was the bang for the buck on the research flights?
/slightrant
This demonstrates something that is bugging me a lot in recent science or R&D reporting about "lack of funding". There is no context, such as, what else is happening in the field and what kinds of consequenses are there. Like it or not I have only limited outrage, and when I see a senator at the State Fair or a representaive's aid at some public event (the most likely interactions I have with these people), I do like to nudge them with something. It is getting harder and harder to even try to distinguish things from the reporting.
Of course lately it is all about connecting the government to the actual real world I guess.
Um, *research* flights are grounded according to Jeff Masters (which is where you should go for further detail). Flights to track actual storms during the season are not. and yes, there is a difference....
Once I had a job flying on these aircraft, and it is a wild ride. It would be a shame if they are grounded.
I imagine that the research flights are important. First, it is probably a time you can check the calibration on ones instruments. Second, if you are collecting data when no storm is present you may learn pattern that occur before big storms. I guess that was the last Republican budget so maybe yelling will get some research funding restored. Iraq is such a money pit when there is so much to do here.
Yeah, I understood "research" flights were grounded. Looks like the 2 million needed to allow anything but straight in and straight out flights at one altitude in Hurricanes is gone. One impact would be the fact that the "African Dust Hypothesis" will not be checked. A second would be that doppler radar improvements probably won't be in the pipeline like those that improved center location precision by 50% previously... I guess that was the kind of thing I was looking for, and found, by digging.
I want to emphasize that I was relying on Jeff Masters (read here) for this post, and did not mean to claim that all flights were grounded *period*. So please, please check out the Masters post for more detail. I don't have any firsthand knowledge here
This week's ENSO forecast has arrived.
quote:
And in fact a modest cooling in the central pacific can already be seen in the SSTs, here or here , though it is niether strong enough nor stable enough to be called La Nina at this point.
llewelly, please refresh my memory on the likely climate impacts of the La Nina portion of the ENSO cycle on North America, the Atlantic, and others.
Is that why, for example, a more severe than usual Atlantic hurricane cycle is predicted for 2007?
If I remember some of Chris' earlier discussion of this, the El Nino portion of the cycle was probably a major factor in the relatively calm 2006 Atlantic hurricane season.
TIA
Fred,
Llewelly may say more, but essentially, El Nino suppresses Atlantic hurricanes, La Nina is the opposite of El Nino, so, you can figure the rest out.....in other words, if El Nino does indeed go away, we can probably expect a more active season. The early forecasts, including the one that I've cited, seem to be assuming that El Nino will indeed go away by the time it really matters. So, steel yourselves....
Fred, please see this Jeff Masters article on the effect of El Nino on Atlantic hurricane seasons.
I also found the Pielke & Landsea 1999 paper helpful (despite their seemingly unhelpful attitudes about global warming).
and this related paper is also helpful, despite the annoying animated rainbows on the page.
Beyond that, if you go to the ESRL Linear Correlations web page, and select 'SST' for which variable, 'Aug' for beginning month, 'Sep' for ending month, 1948 and 2004 for the year range, 'Monthly Hurricane Total' for the Time Series, and 'Tropics' for the Plot Region/Type, you can see the modest negative correlation between tropical pacific SSTs and Atlantic hurricanes.
However - I think predicting ENSO 7 months out is at the limit of modern methods, and there have been La Ninas with below average Atlantic hurricane activity - so don't read too much into this. I recall that this time last year, tropical SSTs were near the threshold for La Nina, but by the time September rolled around, El Nino had set in.