Contact: Harriet Laird
Photo by: Megan Bean
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Balloons and ground-controlled airplanes may seem like kid toys at birthday or weekend parties, but to Mississippi State researchers, they're not for fun and games.
At the university-based Northern Gulf Institute, high-technology tracking balloons and unmanned aircraft systems are yielding better, more precise data on Gulf of Mexico hurricanes. The information these "eyes in the skies" gather can "vastly improve how we tell people to 'get out of the way'" when storms threaten, said institute director David Shaw.
Shaw, who also heads MSU's Geosystems Research Institute, said the 131-year-old land-grant institution "long ago made the commitment to be a leader in academia for having powerful super-computing capabilities." What better way to put the equipment to use "than helping save lives of Mississippians and others living along the coast?" he observed.
The NGI at MSU is part of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research cooperative that also includes the University of Southern Mississippi, Florida State and Louisiana State universities, and Alabama's Dauphin Island Sea Laboratory.
With NOAA, the Northern Gulf Institute is working on a new program that incorporates the latest in tracking balloon technology. Called "precision release," it more accurately monitors wind movements in advance of hurricanes.
"We're also working to gather better data using unmanned aircraft systems programmed to fly directly into the hurricane and circulate with the storm," Shaw explained, adding, "It's a very comprehensive effort."
The data collection is very important to hurricane modelers like Patrick Fitzpatrick. A Geosystems Research Institute associate research professor who has written extensively on the subject, he constantly is seeking improved statistics to track the storms and their intensity.
"With the super-pressure balloons, dozens, if not hundreds, can be deployed to saturate the hurricane environment with measurements to improve hurricane track forecasts," Fitzpatrick said. "Also, the main benefit of the robotic planes is to provide data in regions the traditional reconnaissance data can't measure because of safety constraints."
Adding to MSU's growth and development in this area is a close working relationship the institute maintains with the geosciences department. Part of the College of Arts and Sciences, the academic department offers a popular broadcast meteorology degree program.
Together, the GRI and geoscience teams examine hurricane data in a computer-generated, three-dimensional laboratory known as VERTEX, an acronym for Virtual Environment for Real-time Exploration.
Institute deputy director Robert Moorhead, an endowed professor in the Bagley College of Engineering, said the ability to examine time-varying data in 3-D enables scientists to spot storm patterns that otherwise might be difficult to discern from a single computer screen image.
"It's like those pictures from your recent vacation that just don't seem to excite others like you were excited when you were there," Moorhead said, with a smile. With VERTEX, researchers can enter "an immersive environment where the experience is more realistic."
In addition to scientific study, faculty members use the computer technology to teach future hurricane forecasters. Moorhead said desktop visualization lets students see all layers of a hurricane model. By animating the layers, they better can understand how a storm changes in intensity as it moves over water and onto land, he added.
Shaw said the collaboration among professionals and students "is one of those projects that form a beautiful marriage of cutting-edge research with very practical application. The more we can improve data collection and hurricane forecasting, the more we can save lives, save property and help make the Gulf Coast more resilient."
The relationship is being made even stronger with recently announced construction of MSU's own Northern Gulf Institute facility at the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County. The proposed $9 million, 50,000-square-foot building will house high-performance computing technologies, laboratories and offices. Major funding is being provided by NOAA, NASA and the National Science Foundation.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For additional information on the GRI, contact Dr. Shaw at 662-325-9575 or dshaw@gri.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.