Hurricane Frances Rain Towers
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- Visualizations by:
- Lori Perkins
- View full credits
NASA's TRMM spacecraft allows us to look under Hurricane Frances' clouds to see the rain structure. Spikes in the rain structure known as 'Hot Towers' indicate storm intensity. The 'hot towers' which refers to the tall cumulonimbus, has been seen as one of the mechanisms by which the intensity of a tropical cyclone is maintained. Because of the size (1-5 km) and short duration (30 minute to 2 hours) of these hot towers, studies of these events have been limited to descriptive studies from aircraft observations, although a few have attempted to use the presence of hot towers in a predictive capacity. Before TRMM, no data set exists that can show globally and definitively the presence of these hot towers in cyclone systems. Aircraft radar studies of individual storms lack global coverage. Global microwave or Infrared sensor observations do not provide the needed spatial resolution. With a ground resolution of 5 km, the TRMM Precipitation Radar provided the needed data set for examining the predictive value of hot towers in cyclone intensification.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animator
- Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
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Scientist
- Jeff Halverson (JCET UMBC)
Papers
This visualization is based on the following papers:- http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0112towerclouds.html
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
TRMM (Collected with the TMI sensor)
TRMM (Collected with the VIRS sensor)
TRMM (Collected with the PR sensor)
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.