Field campaign examines hurricane origins

In order to study the genesis of hurricanes, NASA will conduct an extensive field program off the west coast of Africa from 17 August through September. The project, called the NASA African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses (NAMMA),will use surface observation networks, aircraft flyovers, and satellite data to characterize tropical low pressure systems and thunderstorms within monsoons as the air moves over western Africa into the eastern Atlantic Ocean. These tropical air masses, called ‘African Easterly Waves,’ can evolve into tropical hurricanes that drench regions surrounding the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and the U.S. eastern seaboard. “The tropical Atlantic experiences 60 to 70 tropical waves in a given season, but on average only 10% of these become named storms,” explained Jeff Halverson, a meteorology professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a mission scientist for NAMMA.“The overarching goal of the NAMMA experiment is to understand why so few of these tropical waves develop into fullfledged hurricanes,” he said.