Three hundred scientists from NASA's Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment tracked and studied hurricanes in 2010 using sensor-laden aircraft and satellites. In September, they flew into Hurricane Karl near Mexico to directly measure the storm's winds, clouds, and rainfall. Nine months later, the scientists are still analyzing the large amount of data collected, which is already providing surprising new insights about hurricane formation and prompting new research questions. El Nino/La Nina patterns affect hurricane activity by influencing wind shear and rainfall across ocean basins.

1. Gripping
hurricanes
again
By: August Sempsrott
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3. Satellites
•Laden Airplane
•4 NASA satellites
•NASA Terra
•NASA Aqua
•Cloud Sat
•TRMM

4. “GRIP’s mission is to
Why did they do this? understand the physical
processes happening in
a hurricane, but we will
also take that
information to improve
forecasts,” said Michael
Goodman, an
atmospheric scientist at
NASA Marshall Space
Flight Center.

5. Their Findings
“By having multiple aircraft with the Nine months after the field
right array of sensors, we measured mission and in the midst of
several different aspects of the processing the large amount of
storm simultaneously,” Braun said.
“We measured characteristics of the data they collected, the
large-scale environment better, but scientists are seeing glimmers
we also measured the evolution of of surprising observations that
these smaller cloud systems, how challenge what they thought
they evolved into bigger cloud they already knew about
systems, and hopefully how they hurricanes. Although still raw
were interacting with the
environment.” In addition to three and very preliminary, the data
aircraft loaded with updated and are prompting the GRIP
new instruments, the NASA scientists to ask new questions.
Terra, Aqua, Cloud Sat, and Tropical “You don’t often go into the
Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) field and come off the airplane
satellites captured the hurricanes’ and have ‘Eureka!’
clouds and rainfall, as well as
environmental conditions from
space.

6. Three hundred
scientists, engineers, pilots, and crew who
have been pursuing hurricanes to gather
more observations through the NASA
Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes
(GRIP) experiment. The scientists tracked
and studied several storms in August and
September of 2010, as they formed over the
Atlantic Ocean and either petered out or
grew into much larger hurricanes. They took
measurements in, outside, and around the
storms using sensor-laden airplanes and four
NASA satellites watching from space.

7. El Nino/La Nina

9. Severe Storms

10. Image J Analysis
Severe storms El Niño/La Niña
The series of images shown This series of images shows
depicts the strongest the dance between ocean
hurricane, cyclone, or and atmosphere. Changes in
typhoon during each rainfall, right, echo changes
year, regardless of ocean in sea surface
basin. It includes storms both temperature, left. Many
infamous and obscure. The people recognize the
judging is based on the extreme ends of the
storm with the highest wind spectrum, El Niño and La
speed, using lowest Niña, by the severe droughts
minimum pressure as a tie- and intense rains each brings
breaker when needed. to different parts of the
world.

11. What happened ?
In September 2010, more than a
hundred scientists watched
and waited as a tropical
depression hovering over the
Caribbean Sea swirled and
formed into Tropical Storm
Karl. Two days later, as the
storm quickly intensified into
a Category 3 hurricane near
Mexico, the scientists
pounced. Three aircraft with
their payloads of sensors flew
right into Karl to profile the
storm’s innards violently
rotating wind and clouds, and
torrential rains that fell on the
southern bend of the Gulf of
Mexico.

12. Today's lesson: Hurricanes!
With hurricanes it turns out, forecasting
a storm’s intensity is a trickier problem
to solve. A storm’s track is an easier
problem to figure out, Storms are
steered around by the surrounding
winds, which in turn are governed by the
pattern of trade winds that push the
ocean around in the tropics. Large-scale
processes like the trade winds evolve
more slowly which makes them, in some
ways, more predictable. To the extent
that we are able to observe
the large scale
winds, scientists can
forecast track pretty readily.

13. How does El Nino effect hurricanes
• El Nino reduces the number of hurricanes in
the Atlantic Basin primarily due to increased
wind shear, which tends to tear the storms
apart before they can really develop. In the
Pacific, there is usually more activity, but it is
focused further to the east in the Western
Pacific, not moving west of Korea and Japan as
much.