Visualizations by
Kel Elkins
Released on August 10, 2017
NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3, 2012-2014) investigation was a mission that brought together several NASA centers with federal and university partners to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin. The aircraft was equipped with the Advanced Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS) dropsonde system that releases small instrumented packages from the aircraft that fall to the surface while measuring profiles of temperature, humidity, and winds; the Scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (S-HIS) that measures profiles of temperature and humidity; and the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) that measures cloud and aerosol total backscattered energy.
NASA's HS3 mission pilots operated the Global Hawk aircraft on four consecutive 24-hour flights on Sept. 11-12, 14-15, 16-17, 18-19 into Hurricane Edouard and scored a bullseye by gathering information in the eye of the strengthening storm. During the Sept. 14-15 flight, the data from the Global Hawk revealed a storm that was quickly intensifying from a Category-1 to a Category-2 intensity storm.