Despite its recurring impact on human communities in North America, we know little about the Hurricanes. Or rather: less than we would like. This last expression can be applied to all fields of empirical knowledge. Hence, researchers of all conditions continue to advance in their fields of study, taking science and technology to places and places that are still untouched for humans.
And yes, that includes hurricanes too.
We have a recent example in the joint project of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the US agency in charge of monitoring the skies and oceans, and Sailboat, a start-up dedicated to the construction of remotely piloted boats with certain capacities. autonomous. Together they have sent a small boat, the Explorer SD1045, to the last place a human wants to be right now: the most powerful hurricane on the face of the Earth.
The storm in question goes by the name of Sam and is wreaking havoc wherever it passes thanks to winds exceeding 233 kilometers per hour. Fortunately, Sam has yet to make landfall. Its transit occurs in the middle North Atlantic, a site devoid of all human life. But its extreme nature is useful to scientists. If we could access its epicenter to study its nature and better understand the atmospheric dynamics that drive hurricanes towards one place or another, we would be better prepared to defend ourselves against their consequences, they reasoned from NOAA.
Until very recently this idea was a pipe dream. Anyone who entered there would hardly make it out alive. The Saildrone drone, however, can go in there, collect all sorts of data and parameters and record the impressive violence generated by a storm of that caliber wherever it passes. All the videos collected by the ship can be seen here. And they are quite impressive.
The boat dodges wild gusts of wind and waves of up to 15 meters high. The swaying of the waters is so intense and extreme that for most of the time we lose all sense of perspective and space. The horizon is hidden and blurred by the gigantic waves, affecting the sensation of vertigo and dizziness. It is not difficult to imagine the fate of a human crew in such a scenario, literally the center of the hurricane, the metaphorical (and now literal) place that nobody wants to go.
In its turbulent journey, the Explorer SD1045 will be able to gather information on changes in the intensity of storms, the transport of water vapor and other elements not yet fully understood by researchers’. Until now, the kind of information that the drone ship is collecting only reached its hands by means of buoys placed in the middle of the ocean. If the storm, hopefully, passed through there, we could extract information. Yes No No. Remote launching of vessels will facilitate our understanding of hurricanes.
And it is something important for the future. We know that climate change is accelerating extreme phenomena, including ocean storms and hurricanes. Medium risk tropical storms are capable of transforming into Category 4 hurricanes in just 24 to 36 hours. This was something that was once rarer, but now threatens coastal regions more intensely.
It should be remembered that 2020 was the most intense hurricane season ever recorded, exhausting the list of names available for their baptism. Most of the evidence gathered in recent years points in the same direction: North Atlantic storms have increased in violence and destructive capacity over the past three decades, with a clear rebound (three times higher) among higher-wind hurricanes. at 250 kilometers per hour. We are going to need more drone ships in the future. Or right now.