NASA Has Eyes On The Atlantic Hurricane Season
NASA has a unique and important view of hurricanes around the planet. Satellites and aircraft watch as storms form, travel across the ocean and sometimes, make landfall. After the hurricanes have passed, the satellites and aircraft see the aftermath of hurricanes, from downed forests to mass power loss.
Complete transcript available.
Music credits: “Northern Breeze” by Denis Levaillant [SACEM], “Stunning Horizon” by Maxime Lebidois [SACEM], Ronan Maillard [SACEM], “Magnetic Force” by JC Lemay [SACEM] from Killer Tracks
Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
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Notes on footage:
• 0:03 - 0:17 provided by Pond5
• 1:38 - 1.43 provided by Pond5
• 1:49 - 1:52 provided by Pond5
• 2:21 - 1:27 provided by Pond5

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The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center created this visualization using the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) computer model. When combined with data from NASA’s satellites, the model becomes a tool for scientists to fully understand aerosols’ impact and how they fit into the global Earth system.

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From space, NASA satellites can monitor hurricanes as they form, develop and dissapate.

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NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement Mission tracks rainfall in near-real time and can create detailed, 3D images of storms as they form.

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Research scientist Doug Morton of Goddard was part of the team of NASA researchers who had surveyed Puerto Rico's forests six months before the storm with Goddard’s Lidar, Hyperspectral, and Thermal (G-LiHT) Airborne Imager, a system designed to study the structure and species composition of Puerto Rican forests. Shooting 600,000 laser pulses per second, G-LiHT produces a 3D view of the forest structure in high resolution. In April 2018, post-Maria, they went back and surveyed the same tracks as in 2017.
- AIIRS
- Aqua
- Atmosphere
- Atmospheric Phenomena
- Atmospheric science
- Atmospheric/ocean Indicators
- Climate Indicators
- Coastal Processes
- CYGNSS
- Earth Science
- Extreme Weather
- floods
- GPM
- HDTV
- Hurricane Florence
- Hurricane Jose
- Hurricane Maria
- Hurricane Matthew
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- Storm Surge
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Producers
- Joy Ng (USRA)
- Ryan Fitzgibbons (USRA)
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Scientists
- Scott Braun (NASA/GSFC)
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George Huffman
(NASA/GSFC)
- Dalia B Kirschbaum (NASA/GSFC)
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Narrator
- LK Ward (USRA)
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Support
- Kathryn Mersmann (USRA)
Series
This page can be found in the following series:Release date
This page was originally published on Monday, June 3, 2019.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:45 PM EDT.
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