Blimp Typhoon Research in Guam: Final Update (for now)

I have written two posts about miniature blimp typhoon research that was going on in Guam from October 4, 2017 through (on or about) October 21, 2017.  The team of French researchers, working in conjunction with the US National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Office (WFO) at Guam came to Guam with three miniature blimps (aka AeroClippers)with weather equipment that could be released and then hopefully drawn into a tropical cyclone. The idea being that once the AeroClipper is drawn into a tropical cyclone it will be carried along with the tropical cyclone collecting meteorological data for up to 40 days, relaying the data back to the researchers (see my October 9th article for more information on the AeroClippers. Two AeroClippers were released from Guam, one on October 12th and the second on October 14th (for more information go to my October 14th article on the AeroClippers).

I found out a few days later from reading social media posts from the Facebook page of the NWS WFO at Guam that one of the flight of one of the AeroClipper (miniature blimps) was terminated early because winds were steering it toward the island of Saipan (north of Guam, see map below). Unfortunately, the weather was not favorable for the launch of the third AeroClipper. I was interested to learn that the scientists working with the AeroClipper gave a free lecture for the public at the University of Guam on the night of October 19th. I would have loved to be there, but . . . For more information see this short report from KUAM News).

I reached out to the NWS at Guam via Facebook messaging earlier this week, asking them to share one thing about the AeroClippers that they would like you (my readers) to know. This is their response:

US NWS WFO at Guam: I think the bottom line to take from this project is that this research is geared to test a concept to make it easier to insert weather instrumentation into a tropical cyclone in order to obtain nearly constant real-time monitoring of conditions inside a mature TC (tropical cyclone). The data, over time, could pave the way to break throughs in track, intensity, development rate, etc, of TCs. This data would be unparalleled except for infrequent cases that the TC transits a land observing station that is still functioning. There will be lessons-learned from this research, dealing with the design and instrumentation, but they should have some good information to gear them up for subsequent tests in the future, wherever they do another round.

I will attempt to follow How the AeroClipper research is going over the next several months. If I find out anything that I can report here, then I will write another blog post.