GPM Gets a Ton of Kilo

Narration: George Huffman

Transcript:

I'm George Huffman, I'm the Deputy Project Scientist for GPM. As you look at this visualization you see a number of storms, but Kilo is interesting because it's very long-lived. It started south of Hawaii and then progressed across the Dateline, at which point it went from being a hurricane to being a typhoon. Because of the long life that Kilo had, the GPM Core Observatory had a chance to catch quite a number overpasses and this was important to give us different looks at different parts of the lifecycle of the storm. There are things that happen to tropical storms during their lifecycle in particular, the so-called eyewall replacement, where a new eyewall forms outside of the old one and then chokes off the old one and takes its place. The chance to see that is increased when we have lots of overpasses. Kilo is a really great example of why we need satellite data. We can study these storms, which are out in the vast expanse of the Pacific, out a long way from any place, not hurting anybody.