An acoustic sensor vital to joint MIT-Mexico hurricane research is deployed off the coast of Isla Socorro by members of the crew of the Mexican research vessel Altair. Credit: Srinivasan Jagannathan

A half-mile below the ocean's surface, where giant squid and sperm whales swim, hurricane-tossed seas sound like a low roar punctuated by cannon blasts. Nicholas C. Makris, professor of mechanical and ocean engineering and director of MIT's Laboratory for Undersea Remote Sensing, has found a way to use the underwater audio signatures of hurricanes to predict the storms' severity. The technique is as accurate as conventional methods, at a fraction of the cost.

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