It will be the greatest such effort to date

Apr 7, 2009 13:00 GMT  ·  By
NOAA and the NSF will conduct a large-scale experiment in the central parts of the US, aimed at getting more insight into the behavior of tornadoes
   NOAA and the NSF will conduct a large-scale experiment in the central parts of the US, aimed at getting more insight into the behavior of tornadoes

The most ambitious weather experiment in the world will take place between May 10th and June 13th in the central parts of the United States, and will be conducted by an inter-disciplinary team of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as by ten universities and 3 other groups from America, Canada and Australia. The Verification of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment 2, also known as VORTEX2 or V2, is aimed squarely at studying the formation, evolution, and structure of tornadoes, so that more effective defense mechanisms can be set in place.

“Data collected from V2 will help researchers understand how tornadoes form and how the large-scale environment of thunderstorms is related to tornado formation,” NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory research meteorologist Louis Wicker, who is also a V2 co-principal investigator, said. The main founders of the new initiative are the American federal agency and the National Science Foundation, which will support the $10.5-million costs together. According to estimates, the first results of the new research will be ready by fall, when a briefing is envisioned to take place at the Pennsylvania University.

The instruments that have been alloted for this investigation are pretty considerable. More than 50 scientists will operate 40 vehicles, especially equipped for this kind of researches, and of which 10 are mobile radars. The study of tornadoes is nothing without Doppler pulse radars, which have the ability to assess a storm's orientation, strength, as well as to determine its possible course over a period of time. This kind of forecast will be essential during the pursuits, when the experts will drive dangerously close to the massive twisters and tornadoes, in hopes of collecting the most relevant data.

“An important finding from the original VORTEX experiment was that the factors responsible for causing tornadoes happen on smaller time and space scales than scientists had thought. New advances will allow for a more detailed sampling of a storm's wind, temperature and moisture environment and lead to a better understanding of why tornadoes form – and how they can be more accurately predicted,” the NSF Program Director for Physical and Dynamic Meteorology, Stephan Nelson, added.