Water is fundamental to life on Earth. Knowing where and how much rain and snow falls globally is vital to understanding how weather and climate impact both our environment and Earth's water and energy cycles, including effects on agriculture, fresh water availability, and responses to natural disasters. Since rainfall and snowfall vary greatly from place to place and over time, satellites can provide more uniform observations of rain and snow around the globe than ground instruments, especially in areas where surface measurements are difficult. GPM's next-generation global precipitation data will lead to scientific advances and societal benefits in the following areas: Improved knowledge of the Earth's water cycle and its link to climate change New insights into precipitation microphysics, storm structures and large-scale atmospheric processes Better understanding of climate sensitivity and feedback processes Extended capabilities in monitoring and predicting hurricanes and other extreme weather events Improved forecasting capabilities for natural hazards, including floods, droughts and landslides. Enhanced numerical prediction skills for weather and climate Better agricultural crop forecasting and monitoring of freshwater resources.For more information and resources please visit the Precipitation Measurement Missions web site. ||

Learn about the exciting and diverse team that studies precipitation at NASA. Watch interviews with scientists and engineers to get a face-to-face perspective on careers in science and technology. ||

Landslides are among the most common and dramatic natural hazards, reshaping landscapes -- and anything in their path. Tracking when and where landslides occur worldwide has historically been difficult, because of the lack of a centralized database across all nations. But NASA researchers have updated the first publicly available Global Landslide Catalog, based on media reports and online databases that bring together many sources of information on landslides that have occurred since 2007. The catalog, originally released in 2010, is still the only one of its kind.Around 6000 landslides are noted in the catalog. This wealth of data gives scientists a starting point to analyze where, how and why landslides are likely to occur. In particular, NASA researchers have begun to compare landslide occurrence with global rainfall data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission.The catalog is currently available at: http://ojo-streamer.herokuapp.com/.Research: Spatial and temporal analysis of a global landslide catalog.Journal: Geomorphology, March 21, 2015.Link to paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169555X15001579.Here is the YouTube video. ||

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) is an international satellite mission to provide next-generation observations of rain and snow worldwide every three hours. NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will launch a "Core" satellite carrying advanced instruments that will set a new standard for precipitation measurements from space. The data they provide will be used to unify precipitation measurements made by an international network of partner satellites to quantify when, where, and how much it rains or snows around the world. The GPM mission will help advance our understanding of Earth's water and energy cycles, improve the forecasting of extreme events that cause natural disasters, and extend current capabilities of using satellite precipitation information to directly benefit society. ||

Landslides are among the most common and dramatic natural hazards, reshaping landscapes -- and anything in their path. Tracking when and where landslides occur worldwide has historically been difficult, because of the lack of a centralized database across all nations. But NASA researchers have updated the first publicly available Global Landslide Catalog, based on media reports and online databases that bring together many sources of information on landslides that have occurred since 2007. The catalog, originally released in 2010, is still the only one of its kind.Around 6000 landslides are noted in the catalog. This wealth of data gives scientists a starting point to analyze where, how and why landslides are likely to occur. In particular, NASA researchers have begun to compare landslide occurrence with global rainfall data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission.The catalog is currently available at: https://landslides.nasa.gov/Research: Spatial and temporal analysis of a global landslide catalog.Journal: Geomorphology, March 21, 2015.Link to paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169555X15001579. ||

NASA scientists are investigating key questions about hurricanes in a new mission from the skies. This August, the East Pacific Origins and Characteristics of Hurricanes, or EPOCH, mission will fly over East Pacific storms to better understand how they form and intensify. EPOCH will conduct up to six 24-hour science flights using the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft. Three of the flights are being supported through a partnership with the NOAA UAS Program. Data will be collected using three instruments (EXRAD, HAMSR, and AVAPS) aboard the aircraft that will map out the 3-D patterns of temperature, pressure, humidity, precipitation, and wind speed - key factors that influence hurricane behavior. NASA scientists use a combination of ground, modeled, and satellite data to re-create multi-dimensional pictures of hurricanes and other major storms in order to study complex atmospheric interactions. ||

A new model has been developed to look at how potential landslide activity is changing around the world. A global Landslide Hazard Assessment model for Situational Awareness (LHASA) has been developed to provide an indication of where and when landslides may be likely around the world every 30 minutes. This model uses surface susceptibility (including slope, vegetation, road networks, geology, and forest cover loss) and satellite rainfall data from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission to provide moderate to high “nowcasts.” This visualization shows the landslide nowcast results leveraging nearly two decades of Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) rainfall over 2001-2016 to identify a landslide climatology by month at a 1 km grid cell. The average nowcast values by month highlight the key landslide hotspots, such as the Southeast Asia during the monsoon season in June through August and the U.S. Pacific Northwest in December and January. Overlaid with these nowcasts values are a Global Landslide Catalog(GLC) that was developed with the goal of identifying rainfall-triggered landslide events around the world, regardless of size, impact, or location. The GLC considers all types of mass movements triggered by rainfall, which have been reported in the media, disaster databases, scientific reports, or other sources. The visualization shows the distribution of landslides each month based on the estimated number of fatalities the event caused. The GLC has been compiled since 2007 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and contains over 11,000 reports and growing. A new project called the Community the Cooperative Open Online Landslide Repository, or COOLR, provides the opportunity for the community to view landslide reports and contribute their own. The goal of the COOLR project is to create the largest global public online landslide catalog available and open to for anyone everyone to share, download, and analyze landslide information. More information on this system is available at: https://landslides.nasa.gov. Landslides occur when an environmental trigger like an extreme rain event, often a severe storm or hurricane, and gravity's downward pull sets soil and rock in motion. Conditions beneath the surface are often unstable already, so the heavy rains act as the last straw that causes mud, rocks, or debris- or all combined- to move rapidly down mountains and hillsides. Unfortunately, people and property are often swept up in these unexpected mass movements. Landslides can also be caused by earthquakes, surface freezing and thawing, ice melt, the collapse of groundwater reservoirs, volcanic eruptions, and erosion at the base of a slope from the flow of river or ocean water. But torrential rains most commonly activate landslides.For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/new-from-nasa-tracking-landslide-hazards-new-nasa-model-finds-landslide-threats-in-near-real ||

Tour Hurricane Maria in a whole new way! Late on September 17, 2017 (10:08 p.m. EDT) Category 1 Hurricane Maria was strengthening in the Atlantic Ocean when the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission's Core Observatory flew over it. The Dual Frequency Precipitation Radar, measuring in a narrow band over the storm center, shows 3-D estimates of rain, with snow at higher altitudes. The tall "hot towers" characteristic of deepening hurricanes are actually topped by snow! Surface rainfall rates estimated by the GPM Microwave Imager paint the surface over a wider swath. During the tour, you'll see the radar-observed rain intensities displayed three different ways in various parts of the storm. Then, for the first time you'll see estimates of the precipitation particle sizes, which the GPM DPR is uniquely capable of showing, and which provide important insights into storm processes.GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA. ||

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) is an international satellite mission to provide next-generation observations of rain and snow worldwide every three hours. NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will launch a "Core" satellite carrying advanced instruments that will set a new standard for precipitation measurements from space. The data they provide will be used to unify precipitation measurements made by an international network of partner satellites to quantify when, where, and how much it rains or snows around the world.The GPM mission will help advance our understanding of Earth's water and energy cycles, improve the forecasting of extreme events that cause natural disasters, and extend current capabilities of using satellite precipitation information to directly benefit society. ||

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