NASA using converted military drones to study hurricanes

With all the stories we've been hearing about the U.S. using drones for strikes on terrorists and for surveillance within its borders, there's two drones that have been quietly flying mission of another sort — to help protect us all against the destructive power of hurricanes and tropical storms.

NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel (HS3) mission began last year, using a pair of Global Hawk drones, that look more like futuristic fighter jets than sophisticated science platforms. Flying over a storm, these robot aircraft can return 3-dimensional views of the clouds, wind and rain to scientists on the ground, giving them a detailed look at how the storm is developing.

The first use of these drones to track hurricanes was actually back in 2010, when NASA's GRIP mission flew one over Hurricane Karl in the Gulf of Mexico. You can watch the flight from the drone's point of view by clicking here, but the scans the drone took of the cloud layers, with colours highlighting the different heights, are what really show off the details of the storm:

Click here if you can't see the video.

With all the information these drones gather about hurricanes and tropical storms, scientists on the ground will gain a better understanding of exactly what's going on inside them. That will not only improve forecasting where a storm will go, but it will also help them to predict how powerful a storm will get.

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This particular hurricane season has been pretty quiet so far. Of the '13 to 20 named storms' that were predicted, we've had nine, which is about on-track for being just over halfway through the season. However, of the '7 to 11' hurricanes, we're only up to two now, and Humberto only barely avoided having the record for latest hurricane ever in a season. Still, the season isn't over yet, so there's still plenty of time for the forecast to pan out exactly as predicted, and the missions that NASA flies these drones on will help produce even more accurate predictions in the future.

(Photo courtesy: NASA)

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