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 A range of technological advances, from a new generation of
satellites to supercomputers and unmanned drones, promises
more-accurate forecasts that would increase public officials'
confidence in weather experts' advice. In turn, that could lead to a
more urgent response that would save lives.
If authorities were quicker to heed warnings about the devastating
potential of Katrina before it made landfall in Louisiana on Monday,
Aug. 29, 2005, some of the nearly 1,800 lives that were lost may
have been saved, forecasters speculate.
More than two days before the costliest storm in U.S. history
struck, government forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in
Miami put out an advisory showing New Orleans could take a direct
hit. But it was not until 36 hours later that the city issued
mandatory evacuation orders, as experts had urged, leaving many at
risk from flooding after levees broke.
Max Mayfield, the center's director in 2005, recalls placing an
urgent call to New Orleans' then-mayor, Ray Nagin, with a plea to
take urgent action on Saturday evening.
"I wanted to go to bed that night knowing we had done as much as we
could to spare lives," Mayfield said.
Nagin, currently serving a 10-year prison sentence on bribery and
money laundering charges related to Hurricane Katrina contracts, was
not available for comment.
Kathleen Blanco, Louisiana's governor at the time, said Nagin was
slow to issue the mandatory evacuation order but recalled how he had
joined her on Saturday in urging voluntary departures.
"To be fair, we had gotten the majority of people out," she told
Reuters, "but Max Mayfield did a very valuable service to give us a
call and spur us all on more avidly."
COST CONCERNS
Blanco recalled a false alarm in 2004 when Hurricane Ivan appeared
to threaten New Orleans, prompting an evacuation that choked
highways. Stranded drivers were irate when no storm arrived.
Because of past errors like these, Mayfield said, city officials
were overly concerned about the cost of shutting businesses and
schools.
 "It's really important to get the forecast right, but it's also
really important to communicate the certainty of the forecast so
there aren't those 36-hour lags," said Peter Neilley, head of global
forecasting services of The Weather Channel, which is owned by The
Weather Co.
Still, most experts agree there is no such thing as 100 percent
accuracy in forecasting hurricanes, regardless of improvements in
data collection and raw computing power.
"The atmosphere is fundamentally chaotic and unpredictable," said
Jeff Masters, a private forecaster with The Weather Co's Weather
Underground division.
"There's a limit to how much certainty we can have in the modeling."
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While forecasting the track of hurricanes has improved steadily over
two decades, advances in gauging a storm's intensity have lagged,
experts say.
Government forecasters struggled this week to predict the strength
of Tropical Storm Erika as it swept through the Caribbean toward
Florida because mountainous islands and hostile winds interfered
with the weather system.
In 2005, forecasters were notably slow in detecting Katrina's sudden
intensification, said Mark DeMaria, the National Hurricane Center's
technology and science chief.
In response, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
began a project in 2009 to improve hurricane forecasts by 50 percent
by 2019.
NOAA said it was starting to see progress because of major advances
in computer modeling. Real-time observations of ocean conditions,
such as sea surface temperature and height, are improving as well.
Starting next year, new satellites known as GOES-R will feed back
images more quickly and with four times the resolution of earlier
generations, DeMaria said.
GOES-R satellites transmit infrared thermal imagery to detect sea
temperature, which helps determine the intensity of storms, which
draw energy from the water's heat.
NASA also began construction this month of suitcase-sized
"microsatellites" capable of measuring winds in and near the eye
wall of hurricanes.
NOAA and NASA are experimenting with an unmanned aircraft, Global
Hawk, to provide better weather readings, while drones are now being
used to get closer to the interior core of a storm than traditional
Hurricane Hunter planes can.
Also, Congress funded an upgrade of the National Weather Service's
IBM supercomputer system after Superstorm Sandy in 2012, bolstering
capacity to crunch data by 25 times.
"If Katrina occurred today," said Neilley, "every aspect of the
process ... hopefully is a lot better."
(Editing by Frank McGurty and Lisa Von Ahn)
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