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i'm rob guttrow from nasa's goddard

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space flight center and here with me

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today is dr jeff halverson he's a

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professor at umbc maryland and also a

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nasa hurricane research expert good

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morning jeff hi rob how you doing good

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thanks

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we're here to talk about nasa's new

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hurricane mission grip we're going to

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get a grip on hurricanes here with the

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genesis and reintensification processes

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mission can you tell us a little bit

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about grip please well the grip as you

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said it's an acronym for an experiment

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that nasa's doing the genesis and rapid

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intensification processes on genesis

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means birth of hurricanes rapid

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intensification means

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deepening very quickly here you see

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nasa's flying laboratory the dc-8 and

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here you see another new aircraft that

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nasty's using the global hawk the global

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hawk's a drone there's no pilot in it

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and it flies at sixty thousand feet and

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so we take these high altitude aircraft

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we put them in the upper levels of the

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hurricane where it's hard to get data

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and the global hawk can stay over a

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storm for 26 hours that's a long time

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and that's going to revolutionize the

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way we do hurricane science because now

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we can follow a storm as it goes through

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all its changes we're not going to miss

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a beat on a storm it's going to

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revolutionize the way nasa does it now

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what's the difference between hurricane

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hunters that noah flies and the nasa

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grip aircraft mission you know i think

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most of you may be familiar with the

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hurricane hunters they've been doing

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this for years they fly the aircraft

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into the storm but they go in at the low

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levels right above the ocean 10 000 feet

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or so that's a great place to be to

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collect data now here you see we're in

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the upper levels we're looking down

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inside the eye of hurricane earl from

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inside the eye at 40 000 feet and

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there's a lot of important things that

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happen in the upper levels of the storm

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satellites can tell us a lot about the

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upper levels of the clouds but here this

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is a historic picture this is the first

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time we took an unpiloted drone over the

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remnants of a hurricane that's hurricane

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frank over the east pacific and that's

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from 60 000 feet there's no pilot in

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that plane but we're collecting great

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data from the upper levels of the

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systems and that's important for

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hurricane science now the the global

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hawk this is the first time an unmanned

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drone has ever been flown into uh

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a hurricane exactly correct that's

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correct that's right now this mission

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runs through the end of september right

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and uh on september 2nd we're flying the

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unmanned drone is that right are we

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going into hurricane earl today we're

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going over the top of hurricane earl

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this aircraft took off from southern

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california

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uh very early and now it's out over the

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storm it's flying patterns over the top

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of the system it's going to stay out

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there over that storm for 10 11 hours

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and

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then it's got to go back to california

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and typically how long do hurricane

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hunters stay out there hurricane hunters

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will go out for six to eight hours and

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they've got to come back in because they

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need fuel they have crew on board and

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you have the crew can only operate a

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plane for so long you have what's called

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duty hours right what about the

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satellites that are supplementing data

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to this mission well for many many years

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nasa has had satellites up measuring all

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aspects of the earth system and

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hurricanes are no exception here we see

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looking not just at the tops of clouds

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but peeling away those clouds a cat scan

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right we're taking cat scans of

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hurricanes now we're also measuring the

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temperature of the skin of the ocean

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look at the warm water just waiting for

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storms to develop so these are new ways

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of looking at systems and here we see

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super computer simulations these are

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numerical models

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mathematical models that take all that

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satellite data all that aircraft data

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put it in and you run the model and you

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learn about the physics of these storms

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so nasa's taking this places we have

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never been with hurricanes so some of

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the factors that we're looking at for

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genesis

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of a tropical storm would be sea surface

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temperatures as you mentioned right what

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about the upper level winds the upper

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level winds are really important you can

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have lots of energy in the ocean and

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those clouds bubble up really deep but

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if the tops of those clouds get into

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strong winds wind shear the tops of the

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clouds can literally be blown off the

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bottom and you can't get a hurricane

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unless you stack everything up

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vertically so here you see a satellite

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picture of the winds just blowing those

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those cloud fragments away to the north

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and if you get too much of that that

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actually causes a hurricane to weaken

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and we have tropical cyclones out there

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now like uh fiona and gaston are there

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any plans to fly over those storms well

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we we have to wait for the storms to get

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close enough to where we are where the

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dc-8s in fort lauderdale the global

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hawks flying out of southern california

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and we have a third aircraft the wb-57

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which flies at 60 000 feet with two

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pilots that was coming out of houston

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right but so we let the storms move

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towards the west atlantic and then we'll

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go hunt them so yes it looks like we're

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going to get others fiona gaston maybe

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the other storms too

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in closing is there anything that you'd

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like to say about the grip mission how

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unique this is i think it's very unique

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uh the fact that we're sending out an

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unpiloted vehicle this is where the

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revolution is going to take place

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now this is going to be the new way to

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study hurricanes and we're going to move

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all the operations to wallops in the

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year and we're going to start flying

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these

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drones on a regular basis every summer

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wow sounds really cool

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thank you dr halverson thank you rob