Falcon aircraft observations improve the typhoon forecasts
Weismann / DLR
The DLR research aircraft Falcon is stationed at the US Naval Facility Atsugi in Japan since 23 August. It performs observations to improve typhoon forecasts and to investigate the interaction of tropical storms with the midlatidute airflow. Together with two US research aircraft and one aircraft from Taiwan, the life cycle of a typhoon was documented by airborne observations over a period of nearly two weeks for the first time, from the early stage in the tropics until the transition to an extra-tropical system near Japan. Typhoon “Sinlaku” reached a peak intensity of category 4 before landfall in Taiwan where it caused severe flooding. In the following evolution, Sinlaku went along the Japanese East coast and over the base of the Falcon in Atsugi near Tokyo.
The observations are conducted in the course of the THORPEX Pacific Asian Regional Campaign (T-PARC), which is part of a 10-year WMO programme. The funding for the Falcon operations is a collaborative effort of DLR and Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in Germany and other research institutions in the USA, Japan, Korea, Canada and Europe. Wind, temperature and water vapour observations by dropsondes (see right-hand picture; by courtesy of The Yomiuri Shimbun) are transmitted from the aircraft to all weather centres in real-time by a satellite telephone.
In addition, a worldwide unique combination of a scanning wind lidar and a water vapour lidar developed at the DLR Institute for Atmospheric Physics (IPA) is deployed. These instruments use pulses of laser light to observe wind and water vapour profiles in the atmosphere. The data gathered by these instruments shall provide a basis for the decision on the deployment of future operational instruments on satellites or commercial aircraft. Previous research at IPA indicated that lidar observations improve the forecast more than conventional observations.