An overview of the saildrone mission into Hurricane Sam in September 2021 is presented. The paper describes how saildrones were coordinated with other observing platforms, presents preliminary scientific results to demonstrate their use, and offers a vision of future hurricane observations using multiple uncrewed observing systems.
More information on saildrones in hurricanes can be found here. You can access this paper at https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0327.1. For more information, contact aoml.communications@noaa.gov. The mission was supported by the NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO), NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) Ocean Portfolio, Weather Program Office (WPO), Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, and Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. The NOAA Cooperative Science Center in Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (NCAS-M) program provided summer internship support for MMC through the NOAA Experiential Research and Training Opportunities (NERTO). DC-8 overflights were supported by NASA Convective Process Experiment – Aerosol and Wind (CPEX-AW) grant 80NSSC20K0895. Funding for AC was provided by NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (http://data.crossref.org/fundingdata/funder/10.13039/100018302). This publication is PMEL Contribution 5373 and is partially funded by the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, & Ecosystem Studies (CIOCES) under NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA20OAR4320271, Contribution No. 2022-1210.