Saildrone unmanned ship will collect weather data in the Caribbean

San Francisco’s Saildrone first appeared on radar in 2018, when Australian research agency CSIRO used three 23-foot-long (7-meter) sensor-equipped Explorer ships to explore the Southern Ocean. . Earlier this year, a larger sibling, the Saildrone Surveyor, which is 72 feet (22 meters) long, was tasked with mapping the deep ocean floor.

Both of these unmanned ships are driven by wind power, and the energy required for the onboard electronic equipment comes from solar panels. They can operate autonomously via remote control or along designated waypoints, and can remain on mission for up to 12 months at a time. The company offers MAAS (Mission as a Service) or DAAS (Data as a Service) solutions that have logged more than 500,000 nautical miles in the Arctic, Antarctica, Pacific, Atlantic and coastal areas.

Both of these unmanned ships are driven by wind power, and the energy required for the onboard electronic equipment comes from solar panels. They can operate autonomously via remote control or along designated waypoints, and can remain on mission for up to 12 months at a time. The company offers MAAS (Mission as a Service) or DAAS (Data as a Service) solutions that have logged more than 500,000 nautical miles in the Arctic, Antarctica, Pacific, Atlantic and coastal areas.

Members of the flotilla have been outfitted with rugged 16.5-foot (5-meter) "hurricane wings" to allow them to remain operational as they enter the center of a hurricane. This is the result of five months of testing and tweaking during a North Pacific winter storm.

Saildrone founder and CEO Richard Jenkins said: "The new hurricane wing is a game changer for collecting field data in the harsh and volatile weather conditions on Earth. Saildrone will be able to travel to any scientific Ships go where they have never gone before, directly into the eye of a hurricane and collecting data to make communities around the world safer from the impact of these devastating storms." In addition to posing a serious threat to human safety, it will also cause property damage worth approximately US$54 billion in coastal areas of the United States. It is hoped that the storm tracking mission will help improve forecasts.

Air temperature, relative humidity, biological pressure, wind speed and direction, water temperature and salinity, sea surface temperature, and wave height and period will be transmitted in real time to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) and Scientist at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. The data will also be made available to personnel at the National Weather Service, National Environmental Satellites, Data and Information Services and other agencies.

Dr. Jun Zhang of NOAA said: "The big gaps in our understanding of hurricanes are how quickly they intensify and our ability to accurately predict how strong they will become. We know the relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere The exchange of heat between storms is one of the key physical processes that power storms, but to learn more, we need to collect in-situ observational data during storms, which is extremely difficult given the dangers of these storms we wanted Saildrone to collect. The data will help us improve model physics, and then in turn, we will be able to improve hurricane intensity predictions."

It is reported that the five Saildrone ships will be launched from the U.S. Virgin Islands in August. It is then deployed in areas that have experienced large numbers of storms in the past. Scientists plan to collect data during the 2021 tropical Atlantic hurricane season. It is expected that this voyage will form the basis for the deployment of a larger fleet in the future.

　(Original title: Saildrone unmanned ship will enter hurricane zone in Caribbean Sea)