Every hurricane season a fleet of “Hurricane Hunter” planes are deployed to “airtruth” the atmospheric conditions of storms long before they make a landfall. A pair of Lockheed P3 Orion turboprop planes nicknamed “Kermit and “Miss Piggy” are among them. Hurricane Hunter missions are crucial to verify and fine-tune satellite measurements. Hurricane Hunters fly directly into the hurricanes and traverse the eye of the storm several times in order to collect atmospheric data equipped with airborne Doppler weather radar. During their long flights lasting more than 8 hours, the crew deploy about 30 dropsondes that measure a multitude of atmospheric parameters in-situ such as pressure, temperature, humidity, wind speed and wind direction. As these devices fall they transmit their measurements together with GPS location information.
When in-situ Hurricane Hunter data is combined with satellite measurements 3-D structure of a storm can be constructed accurately. This helps estimation of strength and intensity. For instance an instrument on board P3 Orion is SFMR (Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer). The downward pointing antenna of this instrument passively records the microwave radiation coming from the ocean surface. SFMR not only can profile vertical structure of the storms but also provides an estimate of the rainfall rate below the airplane. The data is extremely valuable for medium-range storm forecast models such as the GFS and EURO.
The manufacturers of the P3 Orion celebrated the 50th Anniversary of its service in 2012. This plane was originally designed as a submarine hunter during the escalation into the Cold War. However, it quickly became adopted into other civilian uses such as surveillance, search and recovery and scientific survey including weather reconnaissance. The four turboprop engines allow the aircraft to fly at low speeds without stalling and can withstand hurricane force precipitation where a typical jet engine would be in great jeopardy.
P3 Orion was designed to be robust and can operate in tropical as well as polar locations with full payload of instruments greatly expanding the scientific efforts to understand global climate dynamics. As the sea surface temperatures continue to increase we observe increased tropical storm activity and thus our dependence on Hurricane Hunters forecast ability is increasing.
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