(29 Oct 2006) HEADLINE: Technology Could Make Weather Balloons Obsolete
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CAPTION: NASA is testing a new way to predict storms using commuter jets. If it works, the familiar helium weather balloons now used to forecast the weather, could go away. (Oct. 29)
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[Notes:ANCHOR VOICE]
For years, this is how the government has predicted storms: Helium balloons sent aloft twice a day from nearly a hundred locations across the country - each carrying instruments that transmit atmospheric conditions back to the National Weather Service.
But a new, privately-developed airborne technology could render this decades-old forecasting tool obsolete.
A lunchbox-sized sensor module mounted inside a commercial airplane takes atmospheric readings throughout a flight and beams the data back to a bank of computers, where it's analyzed and turned into hourly updates for meteorologists.
[SOT Taumi Daniels, NASA: "These aircraft are now basically weather platforms."]
The system is called TAMDAR, for Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reporting.
Tests of the twenty-million-dollar experimental network, developed by North Carolina firm AirDat, are being conducted on a fleet of sixty-four commuter jets owned by Midwest-based Mesaba Airlines. Commuter planes are considered ideal because they fly lower than jumbo jets, in the altitudes where bad weather forms.
AirDat executives say early tests over the past year have been promising.
[SOT Bruce Lev, Executive Vice-Chairman, AirDat LLC: "We have found that our data are as accurate and in some cases more accurate than data actually collected from the weather balloons." TRT :08]
Supporters of the system say it gives pilots better reports of hazardous conditions, like icing and turbulence.
When an Air France jetliner skidded off a runway in Toronto, Canada last year, airborne sensors showed evidence of a wind down-burst that may have suddenly accelerated the plane as it tried to land.
TAMDAR backers say the system can also help during a hijacking, allowing authorities to track the plane's position and making it possible for someone on board - such as an air marshal - to relay information:
[SOT Bruce Lev, Executive Vice-Chairman, AirDat LLC: "We can initiate a communications channel from the ground to the aircraft and from the aircraft to the ground, independent of the cockpit, independent of the avionics on the aircraft." TRT: 13]
The federal government says it's impressed with results from the TAMDAR tests but isn't ready to fund the whole system. It's expected to pay for at least such 30 weather sensors within the next couple months.
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