**Hurricane radial wind profiles derived from GPS dropwindsonde data

Recent advances in dropwindsonde technology have dramatically increased the potential for measurement of hurricane structure. Enough GPS dropwindsonde data now exists (courtesy of the NOAA Hurricane Research Division (HRD)) to give a quantative analysis in the inner-core to make a large improvement in our understanding of the structure of the hurricane eye-wall and eye region. This study concentrates on the inner core vertical structure of 6 hurricanes during 1997 and 1998 seasons. Correlations between flight level winds and the low level winds will be presented. New analysis of the humidity and q_E fields of the core is also presented.

It is found that near surface wind within and near the wall cloud often have velocities as high as the winds at 700mb and that q_E's under the eye-wall cloud are generally lower (~345-355K) than expected. This is due to cool low level air temperatures.