The rapid intensification of cyclones and hurricanes is one of the international meteorology community's greatest forecasting challenges. To better understand this phenomenon, a group of scientists flies directly into the eyes of some of the world's biggest storms.
Loading...It's a job that's not for the faint-hearted.
These pilots are about to fly directly into the eye of a raging hurricane, on one of their many missions for the US chief forecasting agency, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
As they approach the wall of the hurricane, at approximately 8,000 to 10,000 feet, the plane — a Lockheed WP-3D Orion nicknamed Miss Piggy — starts to shake, as it thrusts through powerful up and down drafts.
It's a sturdy aircraft, able to move nimbly through nasty weather, but it's still a rough ride.
"It's like riding an old wooden rollercoaster through a car wash," Lieutenant Commander Kevin Doremus says.
Loading...Rain whips past the window, and dark grey clouds blur the view.
At times, Lieutenant Commander Doremus says, it pounds on the windshield so loudly the crew struggles to communicate.
Meanwhile, in the cockpit, the pilots barely have a chance to look out upon the fury raging around them.
They're closely monitoring their path as they seek the "dead centre" of the storm.
"The flight directors are saying 'left five degrees, right five degrees', and we're making those changes while trying to maintain our altitude at the same time," Lieutenant Commander Doremus says.
Loading...Then, about five minutes later, they slice through the eye wall. Suddenly, there is complete calm.
The stadium of cloud which forms the hurricane's inner walls is revealed around them.
With hours of flying behind them, and hours to go, it's one of the few opportunities they have to take stock.
"Not a lot of people get to experience that and it's very unique, so it's pretty cool to see that up close and personal," Lieutenant Commander Doremus says.
NOAA is one of only a handful of meteorological organisations in the world conducting manned missions like this.
On board, each mission has a team of 15 to 18 meteorologists, engineers, other pilots, mechanics and navigators.
They're known as the Hurricane Hunters, and are collecting crucial data about the hurricane's behaviour.
It's an integral part of forecasting what the hurricane will do, according to University of Miami associate scientist Andrew Hazelton, who is one of the scientists who takes part in these missions.
The data the team collects is used by researchers and forecasters of tropical weather systems around the world.
"We're looking at the wind speed, the exact location, the maximum pressure in the centre, we're collecting the Doppler radar data which gives us a three-dimensional picture of what the rains and wind look like," Dr Hazelton says.
"And then all of that data is sent back to the National Hurricane Center to use for their forecasts, and it also goes into our computer models so we can go back and use this data afterwards to do our scientific research."
Each year, the NOAA Hurricane Hunters take on about 50 missions like this, working around the clock.
It can be gruelling work, with each flight lasting upwards of eight hours in the air, passing through the eye several times over.
"It's definitely intense," Dr Hazelton says.
"You're not just trying to survive the flight, you have to be working the whole time and processing the data. So it's an intense eight-hour experience."
But Dr Hazelton says it's still one of the best methods scientists have for collecting information about a hurricane.
"Satellite data gives us a lot of information, but these planes, the way they measure wind speed, and the structure and the humidity, just everything, these direct measurements really can't be replicated by anything else," he says.
According to scientists abroad, including in Australia, it also holds the key to solving one of the "biggest forecasting challenges" for tropical systems — rapid intensification.
A forecasting challenge
The difference between a hurricane, a tropical cyclone, and a typhoon is purely geographical.
But, no matter where you are, the "rapid intensification" describes a scenario where the storm strengthens dramatically in a short period — at least two categories within 24 hours.
And it's a behaviour meteorologists like Joe Courtney say has the potential to be incredibly dangerous.
"Rapid intensification is probably the issue that gives us most headaches as forecasters," Mr Courtney says.
"What what keeps me up at night is the prospect of having a tropical low that becomes a severe cyclone and we didn't pick it."
Mr Courtney, who has been forecasting cyclones at Australia's Bureau of Meteorology for several decades, says despite advancements in forecasting, pinpointing when and where a cyclone will rapidly intensify is something scientists still can't predict.
He says that's a worry — particularly if it means people are caught without warning.
It's exactly what happened in October last year, when severe Hurricane Otis effectively came out of nowhere and slammed into Mexico, near Acapulco — a city of one million people.
The hurricane exploded from a weak tropical storm into a category 5 — the highest category — in just 24 hours.
Acapulco was torn apart, and more than 50 people were killed.
No models had predicted it would intensify to such a perilous level.
Researchers, like University of Albany atmospheric scientist Kristen Corbosiero, watched on with both fascination and fear as the storm grew in strength.
"The strongest forecasts at landfall were for a low-end Category 1 hurricane and Otis made landfall as a Category 5, [so] the intensity forecasts were off by about 150 kilometres an hour," she says.
"Watching the storm intensify so rapidly was fascinating as a researcher as nothing like this had been observed before.
"But [it was] also very concerning as the storm was going to make landfall in a populated area at an intensity no-one was prepared for."
Another catastrophic example was Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which struck the Bahamas, Florida and Louisiana.
By the time its fury had dissipated, Andrew had left 65 people dead and a damage bill of about US$60 billion in today's currency.
In 2017, Australia's Cyclone Debbie also underwent a period of rapid intensification just before landfall, leaving a trail of destruction across the tourist town of Airlie Beach in Queensland.
It claimed the lives of 14 people.
The role of hurricane hunters
Mr Courtney and colleagues at the bureau have been collaborating with international partners around the world to better understand the process of rapid intensification, and how to forecast it.
It's in this space that he says the data gathered by the Hurricane Hunters is crucial.
"In Australia, we do rely upon the research and great technology they have in the US, particularly where they do have aircraft and the computing power to look at this problem," he says.
Dr Hazelton has been with the NOAA's Hurricane Research Division since 2018.
In that time he's been inside several hurricanes as they were rapidly intensifying, including the deadly Hurricane Michael in 2018, which made landfall near Mexico Beach on the Florida Panhandle.
"You had this scientific appreciation for what was happening, but there was also the dread of knowing that a storm this strong was just hours away from impacting people not too far from where I used to live in Tallahassee," he says.
Dr Hazelton says the reason the scientific community has so far been unable to solve the puzzle of forecasting rapid intensification is partly due to technology.
"Only recently have we had enough computer power to even be able to kind of simulate these sorts of things," he says.
Now that it is available, it means each mission through rapidly intensifying systems brings them closer to answers.
"We're making progress, but we're not all the way there," he says.
Rapid intensification in a warming climate
The relatively short timescale of satellite data makes it hard to say whether or not cyclones are rapidly intensifying more now than they have in the past, says Mr Courtney.
But he and Dr Hazelton both say there are indications it could become more of an issue as the world, and its oceans, warm up.
"As ocean temperatures warm we would expect that might lead to more rapid intensification," Dr Hazelton says.
Loading..."But will there be other factors that offset that? Is it going to be different in different basins? Will we get more everywhere?
"Those are all the questions we're trying to answer in addition to the case-by-case basis on a smaller scale."
Mr Courtney says it's a particularly pressing question for Australia, which seems to have more rapid intensification than other parts of the world because the systems are smaller.
This makes them likely to fluctuate up and down more quickly than anywhere else, he says.
A long history
The Hurricane Hunters' history dates back to 1943, when pilot-trainer Major Joe Duckworth flew into a category 1 hurricane near Galveston, Texas after a bar-room dare.
By the following year, reconnaissance missions into tropical systems were being flown by the United States Army Air Forces, with assistance from the then-US Weather Bureau (now NOAA) and the US Navy.
Today, both the NOAA Hurricane Hunters unit and the Air Force Hurricane Hunters are coordinated by the Chief, Aerial Reconnaissance Coordination, All Hurricanes (CARCAH).
With unmanned technologies becoming readily available, the question has been asked about the need to send people into hurricanes in the future.
NOAA has been testing and using uncrewed aircraft, with a 2022 report finding that, in some areas, small uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) "are supplementing data provided by crewed aircraft", and that small and large UAS "have demonstrated the potential to replace some crewed aircraft missions in the future".
But, for now, Lieutenant Commander Doremus says the need for people in these missions is still there.
"We are definitely always looking on where to innovate, where we can be doing our job better using new technologies," he says.
"But the demand for our services, as far as flying a bunch of people into a hurricane with an aeroplane, is there and it will be there for the foreseeable future."
*Note: The video footage of the NOAA aircraft flying through the eye wall is from two individual flights into Hurricane Ida, in 2021.
Credits
Reporting and production: Tyne Logan
Photographs: NOAA, Julian Robins, Alexandre Meneghini (via Reuters), Jose Luis Gonzalez (via Reuters), Mark Withee
Video: NOAA, Kevin Doremus