TRACKING HURRICANES

October 2003
		In recent years, scientists have made leaps and bounds in improving our ability to predict and track hurricanes, mitigating their destructive power. Two scientists, Dr. Naomi Surgi of the National Hurricane Center and Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project, answer your questions about the latest developments in predicting and tracking the devastating storms.

Online NewsHour Special Report: Tracking Hurricanes Forum Introduction How does your field approach view the work being done in chaos theory? Is lack of temperature soundings in the sea the main problem in track prediction? What are the flights through the hurricane like for the observers on board? Are you concerned that such warming might cause not continued warming but a total irreversible change in realities? I was wondering what role Linux and computer clustering have in NOAA's hurricane modeling efforts? Are there any hurricane models that treat a storm as an electrical model where temperature is represented as resistance?	When Hurricane Isabel slammed into the United States' East Coast on Sept. 18, the damage was extensive. However, if it weren't for recent scientific and technological advances, many more lives would have been jeopardized and the potential for property damage would have been far greater. With climatologists expecting an increase in the number of hurricanes, and with more people moving to vulnerable coastal areas, scientists are under pressure to improve our understanding of the massive storms. Two scientists who have contributed to this progress are Dr. Naomi Surgi of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Environmental Modeling Center of the National Weather Service and Dr. William Gray, head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University. The two experts answer your questions.