Earth ID: 3259

Hurricane Rita's Hot Towers

Visualizations by Lori Perkins Released on September 21, 2005

NASA's TRMM spacecraft allows us to look under Hurricane Rita's clouds to see the rain structure on September 19, 2005 at 15Z. Spikes in the rain structure known as 'hot towers' indicate storm intensity. 'Hot Towers' refers to tall cumulonimbus clouds and has been seen as one of the mechanisms by which the intensity of a tropical cyclone is maintained. Because of the size (1-20 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 existed that could 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. At the time the data was taken, this storm was classified as a Tropical Storm with winds off 55 knots and a pressure of 994mb. The existence of these 18 km towers in the eye wall alerted researchers that this storm was going to rapidly intensify. Within 48 hours of this data set, the storm was a very strong category 4 hurricane.

Visualization Credits

Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC): Lead Animator
Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC): Animator
Jeff Halverson (JCET UMBC): Scientist

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

Science Paper:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0112towerclouds.html

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3259

Mission:
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission - TRMM

Data Used:

TRMM/PR

2005/09/19

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TRMM/TMI

2005/09/19

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TRMM/VIRS

2005/09/19

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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.

This item is part of these series:
Hurricanes
TRMM 3D Hurricanes
Hurricane Rita

Keywords:
DLESE >> Atmospheric science
SVS >> HDTV
DLESE >> Natural hazards
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Atmosphere >> Atmospheric Phenomena >> Hurricanes
SVS >> Hurricane Frances
NASA Science >> Earth

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0