As the hurricane season takes off in the US so too will drone planes which will fly into the eye of the storms.It is part of an ongoing project funded by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) to monitor the Earth's atmosphere.
The planes will send back a continuous stream of information which researchers say will allow them to predict the intensity of hurricanes.
But the remote control planes will not be able to take off from the US.
Energy transfer
The drone planes will predict the intensity of hurricanes
For this year at least, they will embark on their hurricane research missions via the Caribbean island of Barbados because the US Federal Aviation Administration has not given Noaa approval to operate the planes from US territory on safety grounds.
Noaa is hoping to launch between two and five flights during this year's hurricane season - which runs for the next six months.
The planes can fly into the eye of a storm at just 300 feet above sea level. This means they can monitor the energy transfer from the sea's surface to the storm, a critical improvement on previous methods of monitoring which used 'hurricane hunter' aircraft that flew at around 10,000 feet.
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