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The hardest thing to predict about hurricanes right is, how to
untangle the puzzle, of exactly what determines it is a tough one.
But we have a whole bunch of new tools now. It’s called the Scanning-
HIS, and that stands for Scanning as it does
cross-tract scanning in order to give aerial coverage.
High-Resolution is the H, its high spectral resolution,
which gives you High-Resolution coverage of the
infrared emitted spectrum. Interferometer is the I,
and that explains the type of instrument that’s used to give the
high spectral resolution coverage and it’s a
Sounder which means from that you can derive vertical
profiles of the quantities. With this aircraft that can
fly for twenty-four hours we can really get the time coverage
of what’s going on with the storm much better than we’ve been able to
do. In fact we’ll be measuring the temperature structure of
the upper area around the storm, also
the water vapor properties of the outflow of the storm,
and the cloud structures. So it’s a
combination of being able to do it in more spatial detail
and get temporal changes that you can’t do from a spacecraft.
Learning little pieces of the puzzle all add up to being able
able to do better forecasting in the future. It’s something that
we’ve studied for many, many, years now, for decades
is how to make measurements like this and to see them
being used is very rewarding, especially interesting to see
our community leading in this area that’s going to turn into
benefits for society.
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