Atmospheric River Reaching California
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- Visualizations by:
- Cheng Zhang
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- Written by:
- Ellen T. Gray
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- Scientific consulting by:
- Andrey K. Savtchenko
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- Support:
- Laurence Schuler
- View full credits
Atmospheric rivers are narrow corridors or filaments of concentrated moisture in the atmosphere that account for most of the pole-ward transport of water vapor around the globe. Atmospheric rivers consist of narrow bands of enhanced water vapor transport, typically along the boundaries between large areas of divergent surface air flow, including some frontal zones in association with extratropical cyclones that form over the oceans.
Atmospheric rivers play a central role in the global water cycle. They are the major cause of extreme precipitation events (which may cause severe flooding) in many mid-latitude, westerly coastal regions of the world, including the west coast of North America, western Europe, and the west coast of North Africa.
This project illustrates an atmospheric river that developed between the 9th and 12th of December 2014, stretching across Hawaii to California based on water vapor data and IMERG precipitation data. The visualizations show the IMERG precipitation data over the white, cloud-like water vapor. Heavy precipitation is shown in shades of red while lighter rains are shown in greens (see the color bar below).
In the visualization above, the time step (the period) between two consecutive frames represents a quarter of an hour.
In the visualizations below, the time step between two consecutive frames represents half hour.
An atmospheric river occured between 9th and 12th of Dec. 2014 over the Pacific Ocean and Southwest US. The color bar is included.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animators
- Cheng Zhang (USRA) [Lead]
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC)
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Writer
- Ellen T. Gray (NASA/HQ) [Lead]
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Scientist
- Andrey K. Savtchenko (ADNET Systems, Inc.) [Lead]
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Producers
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
- Michelle Handleman (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Project support
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.) [Lead]
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Datasets used in this visualization
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Water Vapor
ID: 567 -
IMERG
ID: 863This dataset can be found at: http://pmm.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/document_files/IMERG_ATBD_V4.4.pdf
See all pages that use this dataset
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.