NOAA Research News

NOAA scientists flew multiple missions into Hurricane Michael in the days before landfall, closely observing the rapid intensification of the storm. Their tools included a small unmanned aircraft, called the Coyote, which flew into the strongest winds of the eyewall as the storm intensified to a category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

On Monday night, October 8, 2018, 10 drifting buoys were thrown from the hatch of a U.S. Air Force Hurricane Hunter into the Gulf of Mexico so they could be in front of Hurricane Michael to help with hurricane forecasting.

The University of Colorado has been awarded funding for development of an improved global map of smoke, dust and other aerosol particles.

NOAA constantly strives to improve its models of our changing environment in order to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers, and other decision makers with reliable information they can act on. But improving models takes time, money, and labor—tight budget constraints make this a challenging feat.

With the Mid-Atlantic region expecting a stretch of days with above-normal summer temperatures,  NOAA and its partners will lead a group of citizen scientist volunteers on a mission this week to collect data that will be used to map the hottest places in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.

Editor's note: This is the seventh in a series Dispatches from the Arctic on the August science cruise by NOAA and partner scientists aboard the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy. Today's post is from Janet Hsiao, NOAA John Knauss Sea Grant fellow, and Meredith LaValley of the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee.