NASA Using Converted Military Drones to Study Hurricanes

Converted military drones are among NASA's newest tools in the ongoing effort to better understand how hurricanes and other severe storm systems form and evolve.

Capable of reaching altitudes of 60,000 feet, the Global Hawk drones boast flight durations of up to 30 hours. As a result, NASA researchers are able to peer deeper and longer into storms than ever before as part of its Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel MIssion (HS3).

"It opens a window into a storm we did not have before," said Scott Braun, a research meteorologist for HS3, AFP reported. "Before we had short snap shots of individual storms at various times."

Using the drones, however, Braun and colleagues are able to view a storm continuously for more than 20 hours at a time, allowing for "a better understanding of the processes that govern the intensification in the formation of storms."

"I really see the Global Hawk as bridging the gap between aircrafts and satellites," NOAA scientist Gary Wick told NPR.

The first Global Hawk to fly for NASA was fired up in 2012 in order to study, according to NPR, an unusual hurricane in the Northeast Atlantic known as Nadine. The storm weakened to a tropical storm before mysteriously regaining hurricane strength.

"Nadine at that point was over fairly cold water, and the winds were such that the storm should have been getting sheared apart," Braun told NPR. "And yet it survived. So what was scientifically interesting about Nadine was its resilience, despite very adverse surrounding conditions."

The storm's resilience lay, drone research revealed, in a mass of warm air located in the storm's core, which enabled it to quickly gather strength when conditions were again favorable.

This year scientists have turned their attention to the Saharan Air Layer (SAL), a dry and dusty air mass that forms over the Sahara before moving into the tropical Atlantic starting at the end of spring and continuing on until the beginning of fall. In particular, researchers hope to use the drones to better evaluate the SAL's role on the intensity of tropical cyclones.