Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel Collection

The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) was a five-year NASA mission specifically targeted to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin. The project aimed to assess the relative storm development roles of large-scale environment and storm-scale internal processes, to address the controversial role of the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) in tropical storm formation and intensification, and to study the role of deep convection in the inner-core region of storms. To achieve these goals, sustained measurements over several years were needed. Field measurements took place for one month during each hurricane season from 2012 through 2014. The HS3 campaign utilized two NASA Global Hawk unmaned aircraft, one fitted with instruments geared toward measurement of the environment and the other containing instruments suited to measurement of inner-core structure and processes. The environmental payload had the scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (S-HIS), the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL), and the AVAPS dropsonde system; the over-storm payload included the HIWRAP conically scanning Doppler radar, the HIRAD multi-frequency interferometric radiometer, and the HAMSR microwave sounder. More information about the HS3 campaign can be found at https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/home/projects/hs3.