Hurricane Frances Rain Towers

  • Released Monday, April 11th, 2005
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:56PM
  • ID: 3145

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.

This images shows the hot towers of Hurricane Frances.  The image cuts away the back half of the storm's cloud layer.  The yellow to red stucture is the rain structure of the storm. It has also been cutaway to reveal the eye of the storm.

This images shows the hot towers of Hurricane Frances. The image cuts away the back half of the storm's cloud layer. The yellow to red stucture is the rain structure of the storm. It has also been cutaway to reveal the eye of the storm.



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio


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)

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