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CNN Sunday Morning
Interview With Jon Mercurio
Aired November 24, 2002 - 09:05 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Weather often plays a vital role in the conduct of war. And as the U.S. prepares for possible military action against Iraq, weather conditions there will heavily impact what is done, of course, when it's done and how it's done. Jacqui Jeras with me now, meteorologist, to tell us about the weather this time of year and what it looks like there.
JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Actually, it's a pretty mild climate overall.
CALLAWAY: Is it really?
JERAS: Yeah. High temperatures in the 60s, low temperatures in the 40s, and it's a very dry climate as well.
I want to show you our graphic here, our weather computer. We put one together so that we can fly into the country so you have a better idea of what the terrain is like there. It's very flat. It's basically a plateau, and a landlocked country for the most part. It does border just edges with the Persian Gulf there, but doesn't have much of a marine influence.
Of course, the two big rivers run through it, the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, that head right on out towards Baghdad, the largest city in the country. And then into the northern part of the country, it becomes a little more mountainous, so the temperatures can get a little bit colder there. There are occasional snowstorms and also some occasional frost that take place there.
Now, our next graphic is going to show you the average temperatures that we do see in Baghdad itself. For the month of December, the average high is 64 degrees and the average low is 42. In January, it's 60 and 39. And then February, very much like December, 64 and 42.
Now, in terms of precipitation, very little. On average, only about an inch for all three of those months. And out of the month maybe, four, five days will have cloud cover or the rain. So out of 30, 31 days, that's not very many. So clouds generally aren't much of an issue, being that it's very much of a desert type climate. You don't get a lot of clouds, you don't get a lot of low fog either.
Wind's more of an issue in the later winter months, and into the spring. So May, June, July and August, a big concern there may be dust storms. CALLAWAY: And Jacqui, it's no secret that the temperature, the winds, all of this type of information is used, climate control information is used in planning a war, in how soldiers are trained. And with us now is Jon Mercurio. He is director of the Army's Battlefield Environment Division. He is joining us from our studios in Washington. Good morning to you.
JON MERCURIO, ARMY LAB RESEARCHER: Good morning.
CALLAWAY: A lot of information for the military to use. And what type of information are they looking at and how do they use it in preparing their troops?
MERCURIO: Well, the typical weather that we think about is not really what the military is looking for. We do for planning, but in terms of execution of our battle, what we're really looking for, from the Army perspective, are pockets of intense weather that might occur because of the local terrain.
Behind me here, I have a visualization of the weather prediction over Afghanistan. And you can see that we have the yellow clouds. But -- and, again, that is more for a planning purposes.
But if we zoom in and look at in the mountainous areas, we'll see some red areas that are predicted turbulence. Now, normally, under normal circumstances, the models would not predict this, but we run these models at extremely high resolutions, one to three kilometer resolution, so that we can pick up the fine details.
CALLAWAY: Can you explain how that's different from the regular weather satellites that most people see on TV at home?
MERCURIO: Well, the weather satellites are current weather. What we're looking for is predictions -- predictive weather so that we can plan our actions. And generally, what happens with the soldier is that he doesn't have a satellite feed. So he's going to have to have some sort of information. So he's not really looking at the weather. What he's really looking at -- or weather data. He's really looking at the aids that we produce. We do the analysis of the weather data, and then provide the effect of the weather on his operations.
We can switch to another screen...
CALLAWAY: Jon, I'm going to interrupt just for a second, because really, what you're saying is how the weather is going to affect how the weapons work, the acoustics, and these type of things are what they're really concerned about.
MERCURIO: That's correct. It's been a long time since the Army worried about whether their powder is going to be dry or not. Really, what we -- in today's high technology, the weather has a severe impact on the ability to do targeting. And so the systems that we use for targeting are infrared systems or acoustic systems. So what we're looking at is the impact of the weather, the very local weather on the Army systems.
CALLAWAY: Does it have a big effect on smart weapons?
MERCURIO: Yes, it does. If I can switch to the next slide, it's going to -- here we have an example of a -- what we call a tactical decision aid that was calculated based on the current weather conditions that shows that in the green area -- and this is an acoustic battle aid. And at this point, we have a listener. And any ground vehicle that is in the green area will be able to be heard by the listener. In the red area, they would not be able to be heard.
So this is a decision aid that a soldier could use to say, I can get this close to the enemy before he can hear me. Or vice versa, if this is a friendly position, what we can do is we can determine where we need to send out our sensors so that we can determine the best area of coverage for our own protection.
CALLAWAY: And I know back in the first war with Iraq, there were some issues with how the sand -- how the winds were actually affecting how things operated there, because the sand was such an incredible problem for a lot of the equipment.
MERCURIO: Yes. I'm going to have to skip through a number of slides here because what I had was a sequence of slides to show you the effects of the -- on the various acoustics prorogation.
This is in Kandahar. We have severe terrain, so the terrain has an effect on the acoustics, so let's go forward a couple of slides. In this particular case, we're looking at -- not only is the blowing sand important, but it's also turbulence, which is a very strong effect in the desert. The shot that we have here now is an early morning shot where the turbulence is very light. And you can see that you can really make out the tank.
But if we go to the next one and click on the -- so that we get an animation, you can tell that it's very difficult for the sensor to determine that this is really a tank.
So this -- these are the type of aids that we try to produce for the soldier so he knows what he's going to expect when he looks through his sensor systems.
JERAS: How much better is technology today weather wise than it was back in the Gulf War? Are we going to be able to predict the weather much more accurately now than we did back then?
MERCURIO: I believe that's true. And it's primarily because we have the ability now, with our super computers, that we didn't -- that we didn't have back in the early '90s of being able to produce real time predictions at extremely high resolutions. The earlier simulation that I was showing you was for the entire country of Afghanistan that was run at three-kilometer resolution. And you saw that where we could get extreme fidelity in terms of the turbulence and the location of the clouds. We can predict where the freezing level is going to be. We can predict where the high winds are going to go.
JERAS: Going for icy and air, military time things? MERCURIO: Yes.
CALLAWAY: Jon Mercurio, we want to thank you. We hate to have rushed you through your slides and your presentation, so we apologize. We just want to make sure we got a little bit of everything in your presentation.
Thank you so much for all the information, Jon.
MERCURIO: Thank you.
CALLAWAY: Jon Mercurio, he's actually in Maryland this morning, not in Washington.
JERAS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Army, which is mostly ground effects of the weather, and we also have to talk about, you know, aircraft and also naval as well, so there are three different aspects of the weather that effect how the military would go in there.
CALLAWAY: All right, Jacqui, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired November 24, 2002 - 09:05 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Weather often plays a vital role in the conduct of war. And as the U.S. prepares for possible military action against Iraq, weather conditions there will heavily impact what is done, of course, when it's done and how it's done. Jacqui Jeras with me now, meteorologist, to tell us about the weather this time of year and what it looks like there.
JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Actually, it's a pretty mild climate overall.
CALLAWAY: Is it really?
JERAS: Yeah. High temperatures in the 60s, low temperatures in the 40s, and it's a very dry climate as well.
I want to show you our graphic here, our weather computer. We put one together so that we can fly into the country so you have a better idea of what the terrain is like there. It's very flat. It's basically a plateau, and a landlocked country for the most part. It does border just edges with the Persian Gulf there, but doesn't have much of a marine influence.
Of course, the two big rivers run through it, the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, that head right on out towards Baghdad, the largest city in the country. And then into the northern part of the country, it becomes a little more mountainous, so the temperatures can get a little bit colder there. There are occasional snowstorms and also some occasional frost that take place there.
Now, our next graphic is going to show you the average temperatures that we do see in Baghdad itself. For the month of December, the average high is 64 degrees and the average low is 42. In January, it's 60 and 39. And then February, very much like December, 64 and 42.
Now, in terms of precipitation, very little. On average, only about an inch for all three of those months. And out of the month maybe, four, five days will have cloud cover or the rain. So out of 30, 31 days, that's not very many. So clouds generally aren't much of an issue, being that it's very much of a desert type climate. You don't get a lot of clouds, you don't get a lot of low fog either.
Wind's more of an issue in the later winter months, and into the spring. So May, June, July and August, a big concern there may be dust storms. CALLAWAY: And Jacqui, it's no secret that the temperature, the winds, all of this type of information is used, climate control information is used in planning a war, in how soldiers are trained. And with us now is Jon Mercurio. He is director of the Army's Battlefield Environment Division. He is joining us from our studios in Washington. Good morning to you.
JON MERCURIO, ARMY LAB RESEARCHER: Good morning.
CALLAWAY: A lot of information for the military to use. And what type of information are they looking at and how do they use it in preparing their troops?
MERCURIO: Well, the typical weather that we think about is not really what the military is looking for. We do for planning, but in terms of execution of our battle, what we're really looking for, from the Army perspective, are pockets of intense weather that might occur because of the local terrain.
Behind me here, I have a visualization of the weather prediction over Afghanistan. And you can see that we have the yellow clouds. But -- and, again, that is more for a planning purposes.
But if we zoom in and look at in the mountainous areas, we'll see some red areas that are predicted turbulence. Now, normally, under normal circumstances, the models would not predict this, but we run these models at extremely high resolutions, one to three kilometer resolution, so that we can pick up the fine details.
CALLAWAY: Can you explain how that's different from the regular weather satellites that most people see on TV at home?
MERCURIO: Well, the weather satellites are current weather. What we're looking for is predictions -- predictive weather so that we can plan our actions. And generally, what happens with the soldier is that he doesn't have a satellite feed. So he's going to have to have some sort of information. So he's not really looking at the weather. What he's really looking at -- or weather data. He's really looking at the aids that we produce. We do the analysis of the weather data, and then provide the effect of the weather on his operations.
We can switch to another screen...
CALLAWAY: Jon, I'm going to interrupt just for a second, because really, what you're saying is how the weather is going to affect how the weapons work, the acoustics, and these type of things are what they're really concerned about.
MERCURIO: That's correct. It's been a long time since the Army worried about whether their powder is going to be dry or not. Really, what we -- in today's high technology, the weather has a severe impact on the ability to do targeting. And so the systems that we use for targeting are infrared systems or acoustic systems. So what we're looking at is the impact of the weather, the very local weather on the Army systems.
CALLAWAY: Does it have a big effect on smart weapons?
MERCURIO: Yes, it does. If I can switch to the next slide, it's going to -- here we have an example of a -- what we call a tactical decision aid that was calculated based on the current weather conditions that shows that in the green area -- and this is an acoustic battle aid. And at this point, we have a listener. And any ground vehicle that is in the green area will be able to be heard by the listener. In the red area, they would not be able to be heard.
So this is a decision aid that a soldier could use to say, I can get this close to the enemy before he can hear me. Or vice versa, if this is a friendly position, what we can do is we can determine where we need to send out our sensors so that we can determine the best area of coverage for our own protection.
CALLAWAY: And I know back in the first war with Iraq, there were some issues with how the sand -- how the winds were actually affecting how things operated there, because the sand was such an incredible problem for a lot of the equipment.
MERCURIO: Yes. I'm going to have to skip through a number of slides here because what I had was a sequence of slides to show you the effects of the -- on the various acoustics prorogation.
This is in Kandahar. We have severe terrain, so the terrain has an effect on the acoustics, so let's go forward a couple of slides. In this particular case, we're looking at -- not only is the blowing sand important, but it's also turbulence, which is a very strong effect in the desert. The shot that we have here now is an early morning shot where the turbulence is very light. And you can see that you can really make out the tank.
But if we go to the next one and click on the -- so that we get an animation, you can tell that it's very difficult for the sensor to determine that this is really a tank.
So this -- these are the type of aids that we try to produce for the soldier so he knows what he's going to expect when he looks through his sensor systems.
JERAS: How much better is technology today weather wise than it was back in the Gulf War? Are we going to be able to predict the weather much more accurately now than we did back then?
MERCURIO: I believe that's true. And it's primarily because we have the ability now, with our super computers, that we didn't -- that we didn't have back in the early '90s of being able to produce real time predictions at extremely high resolutions. The earlier simulation that I was showing you was for the entire country of Afghanistan that was run at three-kilometer resolution. And you saw that where we could get extreme fidelity in terms of the turbulence and the location of the clouds. We can predict where the freezing level is going to be. We can predict where the high winds are going to go.
JERAS: Going for icy and air, military time things? MERCURIO: Yes.
CALLAWAY: Jon Mercurio, we want to thank you. We hate to have rushed you through your slides and your presentation, so we apologize. We just want to make sure we got a little bit of everything in your presentation.
Thank you so much for all the information, Jon.
MERCURIO: Thank you.
CALLAWAY: Jon Mercurio, he's actually in Maryland this morning, not in Washington.
JERAS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Army, which is mostly ground effects of the weather, and we also have to talk about, you know, aircraft and also naval as well, so there are three different aspects of the weather that effect how the military would go in there.
CALLAWAY: All right, Jacqui, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
