Scientists test new marine robot hurricane-hunters

[Uncle Bobby]

This looks interesting, although I don't see anything groundbreaking about it. To my mind it's analogous to having mobile buoys:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/31/us-usa-noaa-robots-idUSBRE87U17A20120831

[Cory]

Not a bad idea. I think if they could get enough of them deployed and have them report in real-time, it would be of benefit, especially when they provide data in between recon flights and while a storm is not over a moored buoy.

[das]

This looks interesting, although I don't see anything groundbreaking about it. To my mind it's analogous to having mobile buoys

http://www.reuters.c...E87U17A20120831

It's interesting but the devices are slow, slow, slow. The idea is to build "protective fence" in front of areas of increased interest so you can ingest information early enough for the data to be actionable. Unfortunately, there are many areas of interest and the fence needs to be large enough to capture viable data so costs for a usable fleet can be prohibitive. Good if you are the manufacturer, no so much for taxpaying citizens.

I tend to think that portable buoys and other autonomous sensor platforms make more sense for a couple of reasons. Portable buoys can be placed anywhere in a short amount of time and, more importantly, hurricane hunters get to open the back door. Anytime they get to do that, they are excited and excited huricane hunters are happy hurricane hunters... Just for kicks, here's a pic of just such a deployment before Hurricane Ike:

More useful is unmanned airborne systems like the Mk 4.3 Aerosonde. They can carry a broad, interchangeable suite of sensors, can fly and loiter 24-30 hours, are very inexpensive to operate and can gather a broad range of in-situ meteorological data in real time for input into models or for forecaster analysis. Here's some detail if anyone is interested:

http://airbornescience.nasa.gov/aircraft/Mk_43_Aerosonde

We've come a long way from sub-based tethersonde launches for critical in-situ research data.