Typhoon Forecasting

Overview

More than 10 typhoons hit the Japanese archipelago in an average year. Their strong winds and heavy rains can cause flooding and landslides, even toppling buildings. To minimize such damage, Japan is working to further improve its predictions and monitoring of typhoon activity. But, accurately predicting a typhoon's changing strength is particularly challenging. To address this, researchers now fly a plane into the eye of a typhoon to measure the actual atmospheric conditions directly on-site. In this episode, we learn more about flying into these fierce typhoons.