NASA-built weather sensors capture vital data on Hurricane Ian

A pair of microwave radiometers collected knowledge on the storm as they handed over the Caribbean Sea aboard the Worldwide Area Station.

Two not too long ago launched devices that have been designed and constructed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to offer forecasters knowledge on climate over the open ocean captured pictures of Hurricane Ian on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022, because the storm approached Cuba on its method north towards the U.S. mainland.

COWVR (brief for Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer) and TEMPEST (Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Techniques) observe the planet’s ambiance and floor from aboard the Worldwide Area Station, which handed in low-Earth orbit over the Caribbean Sea at about 12:30 a.m. EDT.

Ian made landfall in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province at 4:30 a.m. EDT, in accordance with the Nationwide Hurricane Middle. At the moment, it was a Class 3 hurricane, with estimated wind speeds of 125 mph (205 kph).

The picture above combines microwave emissions measurements from each COWVR and TEMPEST. White sections point out the presence of clouds. Inexperienced parts point out rain. Yellow, purple, and black point out the place air and water vapor have been transferring most swiftly. Ian’s middle is seen simply off of Cuba’s southern coast, and the storm is proven masking the island with rain and wind.

COWVR and TEMPEST despatched the info for this picture again to Earth in a direct stream by way of NASA’s monitoring and knowledge relay satellite (TDRS) constellation. The information have been processed at JPL and made accessible to forecasters lower than two hours after assortment.

In regards to the dimension of a minifridge, COWVR measures pure microwave emissions over the ocean. The magnitude of the emissions will increase with the quantity of rain within the ambiance, and the strongest rain produces the strongest microwave emissions. TEMPEST—comparable in dimension to a cereal field—tracks microwaves at a a lot shorter wavelength, permitting it to see ice particles throughout the hurricane’s cloudy areas which might be thrust into the upper atmosphere by the storm.

Each microwave radiometers have been conceived to show that smaller, extra energy-efficient, extra merely designed sensors can carry out a lot of the identical measurements as present space-based climate devices which might be heavier, devour extra energy, and price way more to assemble.