NOAA sent drone into Hurricane Sam, the strongest storm on Earth

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sailed a robotic surfboard with a strong vertical “hurricane wing” through the heart of Hurricane Sam, currently the strongest storm on Earth with sustained winds of 145 mph.

Why is this important: The unprecedented images of the unmanned ship inside a major Atlantic hurricane, along with data from the drone, help forecasters refine their understanding of these terrible storms.

Driving the news: Hurricane Sam is what meteorologists call a “fish” storm, unlikely to directly affect land and primarily affecting the open ocean.

• The Air and Sea Agency is responsible for both making hurricane forecasts and researching such storms to improve those forecasts. The new drone program, a partnership with private company Saildrone, is helping fill a key data gap that cannot be filled by intrepid hurricane hunters who weather such storms.
• Forecasters need to know more about heat exchange between sea and atmosphere to better predict changes in hurricane intensity, as well as water vapor transport, among other issues.
• According to NOAA, the Saildrone Explorer SD1045 is dealing with waves of 50 feet and winds of over 120 mph from its location in the storm.
• The SD 1045 is one of five Saildrones that NOAA has deployed this hurricane season to collect in situ data that was not previously available on other platforms, unless the agency had luck and a storm passed directly over a buoy.

The plot: Over the past several decades, while significant improvements have been made in improving hurricane track forecasting, changes in intensity have proven more difficult to predict.

• By increasing air and ocean temperatures, climate change is helping to fuel a trend of more storms that experience rapid intensification from a tropical storm to a Category 3 or 4 hurricane in 24 to 36 hours.
• Hurricane Sam underwent such a process earlier in his life.
• “Using the data collected by the saildrones, we plan to improve forecast models that predict rapid intensification of hurricanes,” Greg Foltz, a NOAA scientist, said in a press release.