A US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “Hurricane Hunter” aircraft has returned to Shannon Airport to continue its weather research mission.
One of NOAA’s two Lockheed WP-3D Orion aircraft (N42RF) has been deployed to Ireland to measure ocean-surface winds in winter storms over the North Atlantic. The aircraft, nicknamed ‘Kermit” departed its base in Florida on January 16th and arrived in Shannon via Canada on January 18th.
After several days at Shannon, the high-tech plane repositioned to Bilbao Airport in the North of Spain on Thursday but has since returned to Shannon.
A NOAA spokesperson told The Clare Herald: “These flights are part of an ongoing NOAA Satellite and Information Service project to calibrate and validate data collected by weather satellite sensors and to test new remote sensing technologies.
The project, known as “Ocean Winds,” helps scientists and engineers improve the quality and consistency of satellite-based weather data used in forecasting and modelling. This is the fourth year NOAA has conducted this project from Ireland.
Dr. Paul Chang is NOAA Global Change Observation Mission Project Scientist and Ocean Winds Science Team Lead for the NOAA Satellite and Information Service. He has visited Ireland in the past on similar missions.
He said: “We have also operated out of Halifax, Nova Scotia and St. John’s, Newfoundland in the past. These places also give us a good vantage point. The advantage of Ireland is that the storms are generally coming toward us versus us having to chase them, and the warmer airport conditions are easier for the P-3 support.”
The aircraft is based at the NOAA Aircraft Operations Centre in Lakeland, Florida.
*When the same aircraft and its crew was based at Shannon in 2017, they featured on Clare FM.