Advancing Tropical Cyclone Forecasts Using Aircraft Observations - Monitoring and Prediction of Tropical Cyclones in the Indian Ocean and Climate Change - page 170

Fig. 2: Synoptic surveillance flight tracks for the NOAA G-IV and two P-3 aircraft in
Hurricane Georges 1998. The hurricane symbols denote the storm locations during the
time of the two P-3 inner core-sampling missions. Blue line denotes the coastline of
South America and the Windward and Leeward Islands that bound the Caribbean Sea.
(as much as 30%) in global and regional dynamical models (Burpee et al.,
1996). In addition, Shapiro and Franklin (1995) used an analysis of Hurricane
Gloria (1985) synoptic flow data to diagnose the potential vorticity structure
of a TC and to describe its dynamics, wind balance, and interaction with the
environmental flow. Franklin et al. (1996) used analyses of all the synoptic
flow dropwindsonde data to document the existence of beta gyres and investigate
their impact on TC motion.
The success of synoptic flow flights led to the development of a new
generation of dropwindsonde (Hock and Franklin, 1999) and the acquisition
of a high-altitude jet aircraft (the Gulfstream-IV SP) as a dedicated operational
platform to conduct synoptic surveillance missions. These operational flights,
along with concurrent research into optimal targeting and sampling strategies
and data assimilation, continue to improve National Centers for Environmental
Prediction (NCEP) operational global model track forecasts significantly
(Aberson, 2003). A complete G-IV flight and the required dropwindsondes
cost about $40,000, far less than the estimated average of $1 million needed to
evacuate just one mile of coastline for landfall (Whitehead, 2003).