Technique may yield better hurricane forecasts
Combining microwave with infrared satellite data may help scientists keep coastal residents out of harm's way.
DB: This is Earth & Sky. Hurricanes are fueled by warm sea water. The warmer the water, the more intense the hurricane.
JB: Weather forecasters use satellites to measure infrared light from the top of the sea. They translate that into sea surface temperatures.
Chelle Gentemann: But hurricanes tend to have a lot of clouds around them. The way that you see them on the weather channel is you see these swirling clouds. And those clouds are going to block the infrared sea surface temperature measurement, so you really won’t know what temperatures that hurricane is going to encounter.
DB: That’s Chelle Gentemann at Remote Sensing Systems in California. She says microwave energy isn’t blocked by clouds. And she’s part of a team hoping to blend infrared and microwave data to get a more accurate measure of sea surface temperatures – and, in turn, better predictions of hurricane intensity.
Chelle Gentemann: If a storm is coming towards a city or a very densely populated area, such as Miami or New Orleans, you would like to know if it’s going to be a category five storm or a category one storm. If you get your intensity wrong and you evacuate everybody in Miami and it turns out it’s a very weak storm, a lot of people, millions of people, are going to be very angry at you.
JB: Our special thanks to NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
There are many other applications for SST data, including improving general weather forecasts, monitoring climate change, predicting large scale weather patterns called El Nino’s and observing the health of coral reefs.
Thanks to:
Chelle Gentemann
Remote Sensing Systems
Santa Rosa, CA
Additional Teacher Resources
NOAA: Hurricane Models
To forecast the track and intensity of tropical cyclones, the NHC uses several different mathematical computer models that represent the tropical cyclone and its environment in a greatly simplified manner. Each of the models has particular strengths and weaknesses, and researchers are constantly working to improve them.
NOAA: Hurricane Basics
There is nothing like them in the atmosphere. Born in warm tropical waters, these spiraling masses require a complex combination of atmospheric processes to grow, mature, and then die. They are not the largest storm systems in our atmosphere or the most violent, but they combine these qualities as no other phenomenon does.
