Eight Drifting Buoys Deployed in Front of Hurricane Teddy

On Saturday, September 19, 2020 eight drifting buoys were deployed in front of Hurricane Teddy. The photo to the left shows loading of eight hurricane drifters onto the US Air Force C-130 Cargo airplane for deployments. A variety of drifter types were deployed and will measure sea surface temperature (SST), wave spectra, sea level pressure (SLP) and upper ocean heat content, with the ultimate goal of improving hurricane intensity forecasts. This field deployment was swiftly made possible due to the coordinated efforts of the Global Drifter Program (GOMO, AOML, and Scripps LDL) and the 53rd Squadron Hurricane Hunters.

This deployment and research is part of a greater effort among the Global Drifter Program and partners to improve hurricane intensity forecasting with in situ ocean observations (Extreme Events-Ocean Observations Task Team). In the map diagram below, you can see the expected position of each drifter. Each dot is a pair of drifters: magenta is Minimet drifter (SVPB + wind speed, direction) paired with a directional wave spectrum drifter (DWSD), while white is an ADOS drifter (thermistor chain to 150m replacing Minimet’s 15m drogue) and a DWSD. Background shading is absolute dynamic topography; forecast location of the storm center at drop time is “+”, and the image also shows the forecast location at +12h, +24h (obscured by buoy drop locations) and +36h.