Visualizations by
Lori Perkins
Released on June 14, 2006
From hot towers to phytoplankton blooms, NASA's cutting-edge hurricane research has been revealing never-before-seen aspects of these giant storms for over a decade. The past three years have seen great progress in the areas of intensity monitoring and 3-D modeling of hurricanes. In 2006, scientists at NASA and other institutions have more tools than ever to study these storms using the very latest in ground, air, and space-based technology. The top left window shows sea surface temperature and clouds. Orange and red colors represent ocean temperatures at 82 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. This is the temperature required for hurricanes to form. The bottom left window shows wind analysis model data from NASA's Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction (MAP '05) program. The top right window shows Rainfall Accumulation for Hurricane Katrina from the TRMM spacecraft. The bottom right window shows Energy-releasing deep convective clouds (to 16 km) in the eyewall of Hurricane Katrina, called 'Hot Towers', on August 28 occurred while the storm was intensifying to a category 5 classification.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0