GPS World, February 2016
WATCH MARKET UAV 2 Coyote Howls into the Wind NOAA Raytheon Deploy UAS for Hurricane Research A team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA and Raytheon has successfully demonstrated advancements of the Coyote Unmanned Aircraft System UAS verifying new technology that improves Coyotes ability to collect vital weather data on hurricanes Coyote drops out of a P 3 weather surveillance plane spreads its wings and flies straight at a hurricane braving violent winds and punishing rain to gather weather data and beam it back to meteorologists Coyote solves a problem that has limited forecasters ability to tell how hard a hurricane will hit The secret behind the storms punch lies in what is known as the boundary layer a low altitude area that includes the surface of the ocean Because hurricanes are fueled by warm ocean water information collected at the interface of atmosphere and ocean is vital to the understanding and prediction of a storms strength Thats where the energy is extracted from the ocean to the atmosphere said Joe Cione a NOAA hurricane researcher Unfortunately it is too difficult for us to go with manned aircraft to fly down there The Coyote can maneuver in the most violent regions of a hurricane Traditional weather instruments parachute from a plane and grab only a snapshot of humidity wind speed and other factors but Coyotes winged design enables it to linger and return to certain areas NOAA scientist Paul Reasor demonstrates the Coyote Photo NOAA for more measurements Coyote will gather data specifically in the eye wall where it can provide information for forecasters to predict intensity from a safe distance said John Hobday Raytheon This is a significant difference for researchers instead of providing a snapshot of data its a full length movie OPERATIONAL UPGRADES In a Jan 7 test the Coyote was released from NOAAs Hurricane Hunter P 3 aircraft and flew over the Avon Park Air 44 GPS WORLD WWW GPSWORLD COM FEBRUARY 2016 Force Range in Florida to measure the transmission range of upgraded technologies It set a new distance record for flight control and data transmission to the P 3 and provided hurricane forecasters with real time data on atmospheric air pressure temperature moisture wind speed and direction as well as surface temperature Data collected will help improve the accuracy of forecasts Here at the National Hurricane Center NHC we are keenly interested in obtaining measurements from the Coyote of the strongest winds near the center of the storm said Chris Landsea science operations officer at NHC Coyote could help us paint a better picture of current storm intensity for our storm updates In 2014 NOAA deployed four of the Coyote planes into Hurricane Edouard a The Coyote after a successful flight on Jan 7 Photo NOAA
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