How Mother Nature Gives Birth to a Monster Like Ivan the Terrible; so What Triggers a Hurricane and Is Global Warming a Factor? Beth Pearson Meets the Researchers Working Flat Out to Learn From the Latest Trail of Devastation

Summary

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The arrival of hurricane Ivan to Jamaica has been anticipated for more than a week. In a few months, Chris Landsea hopes to understand it. A researcher at the hurricane division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Florida, Landsea will be analysing data gathered from Gulfstream research flights that will depart every 12 hours, at 5.30am and 5.30pm GMT, throughout the weekend, while a lower-altitude aircraft will depart today at 2pm GMT.

"We're pretty much working round the clock," says Landsea, who was aboard research flights on Monday and Tuesday. "We don't have the operational forecasting duties that the national hurricane centre have, but we're busy, too. A lot of the data is collected automatically onboard the flight. We'll be looking at the data for the next few weeks or months."

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How Mother Nature Gives Birth to a Monster Like Ivan the Terrible; so What Triggers a Hurricane and Is Global Warming a Factor? Beth Pearson Meets the Researchers Working Flat Out to Learn From the Latest Trail of Devastation

Among the instruments onboard are GPS-sondes which are dropped out of the aircraft to receive signals from satellites and send a signal back to the aircraft. This is tracked every half second and enables researchers such as Landsea to construct wind profiles, as well as letting the pilot know where it's unsafe to fly. Radars are used to map areas of the storm and analyse capillary waves on the surf...

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