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noticed in the tropics because tropical weather is normally so benign, and the majority of us who reside in the northern hemisphere seldom hear the complaints of our cousins in the opposite hemisphere, for whom lack of meteorlogical data is a constant problem. 
What we do have in hurricane-prone regions is satellite based data. This has proven absolutely essential to the "watching" of hurricanes, which are rare examples of atmospheric phenomena that are coherent and whose location is easily defined as the center of the eye. Beyond this, satellite data are of limited use.  
The fundamental limitation of satellites is their comparative inability to provide QUANTITATIVE information about temperature, moisture and winds. Some temperature and moisture data can be obtained from satellites by measuring the infrared radiation emitted by the atmosphere, but this has so far proven to be too crude to be of much use in forecasting, and the hopes for improvement are slim due to fundamental theoretical limitations on the precision to which these quantities may be estimated. Winds can be obtained through the tedious and labor-intensive means of literally tracking bits of cloud from one picture to the next, but these too are subject to error since winds typically change very rapidly with altitude and it is difficult to estimate with any precision the altitude of the clouds. Thus while satellites are essential in detecting storms, they are less useful for measuring what needs to be measured to understand how the cyclones behave and for predicting their motion and intensity. Another important limitation of satellites is their complete inability to detect properties of the ocean, aside from the temperature of the sea surface. 
Faced with these limitations, scientists who must forecast hurricanes as well as those interested in better understanding them continue to rely heavily on observations made by specially equipped reconnaisance aircraft. These have the ability to measure precisely the crucial atmospheric variables using equipment on the aircraft themselves, and using instrumental packages called dropwindsondes, which as their name implies are dropped from the aircraft on parachutes. There is also a version of these instruments that deploys probes several hundred feet into the sea after landing on the sea surface. Data are then relayed by radio to the aircraft. Thus the reconnaisance aircraft provide detailed data from the flight level downward to the bottom of the ocean's mixed layer. 
Unfortunately, today's reconnaisance aircraft fly only about half as high as the outflow layer of the hurricane, and so a very important part of the storm dynamics is completely missed. Moreover, it is an expensive program (the high cost led the U.S. Air Force to cancel all reconnaisance in the western Pacific region). It also carries with it certain risks; several airplanes were lost in the early days of the operations and at least one close call has occurred in recent years. Pilotless aircraft would provide a nearly ideal platform for making measurements in and around hurricanes. The optimal solution is an aircraft capable of flying at altitudes of around 20 km, above the top of the tallest hurricanes, and deploying numerous dropwindsondes and a smaller number of oceanographic data buoys. By this means, quantitative details of the atmospheric and oceanographic environment may be obtained. Not only would such data go far beyond what is now available, but they would be obtained at substantially reduced cost. The benefits to scientific research and to operational prediction of tropical would be larger. The effect of such measurements on the ability to tackle the scientific questions outlined above would be enormous:
1. By sampling the detailed wind and thermodynamic environment of tropical disturbances, the hypotheses regarding the failure of most of them to develop into cyclones can be rigorously tested. This would no doubt improve the ability to forecast hurricane development, which is particularly crucial in the case of storms that develop near land. 
2. The failure of most hurricanes to develop to their full potential remains mysterious. The hypothesis that this is due to the churning up cold water from the deep ocean could be tested by deploying expendable bathythermographs from pilotless aircraft and measuring the actual properties of the ocean's mixed layer as it develops in the course of the storm. At present, there is a consensus among hurricane forecasters that there is no skill in predicting changes in hurricane intensity; that is, it is not now possible to beat, in a statistically significant way, the forecast that a 

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