NASA's 3-D animation of Typhoon Conson's heavy rainfall and strong thunderstorms

The TRMM satellite got a good view of tropical storm Conson (known as “Basyang” in the Philippines) in the west Pacific Ocean as it passed directly overhead on July 12 at 1550 UTC (1:50 p.m. EDT/1:50 a.m. local time on July 13). TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR) and TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) data from the orbit were used when creating the rainfall analysis.

That rainfall analysis showed intensifying tropical storm Conson was already very well organized. TRMM data clearly showed that an eye was forming with heavy thunderstorms located northeast of the storm's center of circulation. Those thunderstorms were dropping rainfall at a rate of almost 2 inches per hour.

Hal Pierce of NASA's TRMM Team, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. created the 3-D animation of Typhoon Conson using data from July 12. In the animation, Pierce said that “The developing eye is shown reaching to heights above 15 kilometers (~9 miles).”

There were also hot towers around Conson's eye. A hot tower is a tropical cumulonimbus cloud that punches through the tropopause and reaches into the stratosphere. They are called “hot towers” because they rise high due to the large amount of latent heat released as water vapor condenses into liquid and freezes into ice. Hot towers may appear when the hurricane is about to intensify, which is exactly what Conson did after the hot towers were seen by the TRMM satellite.

The TRMM Precipitation Radar 3-D image showed that Conson was already a typhoon at 1550 UTC (1:50 p.m. EDT/1:50 a.m. local Asia/Manila time), which allowed forecasters to reclassify Conson from a tropical storm to a typhoon. TRMM Precipitation Radar revealed that the eye was already well formed indicating that Conson had reached typhoon status at that time.

TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA.

Media Contact

Rob Gutro EurekAlert!

More Information:

http://www.nasa.gov

All latest news from the category: Earth Sciences

Earth Sciences (also referred to as Geosciences), which deals with basic issues surrounding our planet, plays a vital role in the area of energy and raw materials supply.

Earth Sciences comprises subjects such as geology, geography, geological informatics, paleontology, mineralogy, petrography, crystallography, geophysics, geodesy, glaciology, cartography, photogrammetry, meteorology and seismology, early-warning systems, earthquake research and polar research.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Memory Self-Test via Smartphone

… Can Identify Early Signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Dedicated memory tests on smartphones enable the detection of “mild cognitive impairment”, a condition that may indicate Alzheimer’s disease, with high accuracy….

Partners & Sponsors