In the morning of October 16 of 2001, Taiwan Aerosonde Team (TAT) launched one unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV),Aerosonde, into Typhoon Haiyan for detecting the atmospheric environment of typhoon circulation. This in-situ observation by Aerosonde provides opportunities to evaluate the Doppler radar wind field derived from Wu-Fen-San NEXRAD-S Radar and numerical simulation from NCAR/PENN Mesoscale Model (MM5) on this north-western Pacific typhoon system.

This paper describes the operation of Aerosonde by TAT first. Then the comparison for wind speed and water vapor among Aerosonde, Radar and model simulation was addressed. We found the wind field derived from Radar and MM5 model were underestimated. Water vapor simulated from MM5 had obvious low bias than the others.

Aerosonde is too light to approach the inner circulation of Typhoon Haiyan. The best route selection for navigating Aerosonde into Typhoon was studied through air parcel tracking with MM5 model simulations. Weekly filed campaign in summertime of 2002 will be held at Bashi Channel region to get more in-situ observation of marine weather systems by Aerosonde.