Miniature Blimp/balloon typhoon research in Guam

This is the first of at least a couple of posts about miniature blimp/balloon typhoon research going on in Guam in October of 2017. This post, divided into three parts,  is a little longer than my usual post. In the first section is an introduction and a little bit about Guam (focusing on geography). After providing some links to information about tropical cyclones in the second section, I share information from the NWS Guam about the typhoon research being conduction in Guam by researchers from the French CNES agency. Finally in section three, I provide a link(s) to more of my posts about the miniature blimp known as the AeroClipper.

1. INTRODUCTION AND ABOUT GUAM
A few months ago, I started to become familiar with the US NWS WFO at Guam because a NWS meteorologist I knew transferred to Guam. So, I found and bookmarked the US NWS Guam Facebook site  I check in with the NWS Guam Facebook page, in part because I am interested in learning more about typhoons. Just last week, I was checking out the NWS Guam’s Facebook page when I found out about some very interesting research that some researchers from France will be doing out of Guam from October 4th to October 21st (weather permitting). I want to share a little about that research with you, but before I do that a little geography and a little about Guam

As you can see, Guam, which is an unincorporated territory of the United States, is located in the Western Pacific. According to the entry for Guam in the CIA World Fact Book (go here), Guam is at 13.28 N, 144.47 E. Guam's climate is tropical marine (see the geography entry in CIA World Fact Book's entry for Guam. 

2. TYPHOONS AND THE AEROCLIPPER

As you may know, tropical cyclones in that part of the pacific where Guam is located are known as typhoons while tropical cyclones off of the atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico are known as hurricanes. The National Weather Service has a nice module on tropical weather, including tropical cyclones at their Jet Stream Education site. Now, I know that both typhoons and hurricanes are tropical cyclones and I wanted to know more about Guam. I had heard references about the northwest pacific being known as typhoon alley, so I searched on typhoon alley and came up with an article from weather.com written in July 2016 that you may find here. I learned a lot about typhoons in general as well as the differences between typhoons and hurricanes. I then wrote to my friends at the NWS WFO at Guam to see if they had any comments on the article. They told me that the article covers it, stressing that “all the ingredients for tropical cyclone development are here all year round and little land mass to stop development — practically none until you reach the far western Pacific.

I am always interested in learning more about interesting weather related research involving aviation, including the use of balloons. So when I came upon the following Facebook post from the US NWS Guam at the end of last week, I was fascinated. It was after reading that Facebook post, which I am embedding below that I knew that I wanted to share this with you. The first thing I did was to learn a little more about Guam which I have shared in the beginning of this article. Please take a few moments to read about this fascinating research involving balloons known as AeroClippers. Hopefully, there will be a couple of nearby tropical cyclones so that the folk from CNES in France can do their research. I am fascinated by what the AeroClippers could mean to providing data that will help forecasters in the Western Pacific and elsewhere get data from the eye of the typhoon. I am looking forward to following the CNES AeroClipper research while they are in Guam and wish them the best. The Facebook post was posted on October 6, 2017.

Here are a couple of media articles from the Guam Press about the Aero Clipper. As always, I am never certain how long these links will be up.

• KUAM report and video about the AeroClipper, October 6, 2017
• Pacific Daily News report and video about the AeroClipper, October 6, 2017

3. MORE OF MY POSTS ABOUT THE MINATURE BLIMP KNOWN AS THE AEROCLIPPER

• October 14th: I posted on the launch of two of the AeroClippers by the CNES researchers working out of Guam
• My final article (for now) on the blimp (AeroClipper) typhoon research is on October 27th.