NRL tropical cyclone satellite meteorological demonstration products

Satellite remote sensing capabilities to monitor tropical cyclone (TC) location, structure, and intensity have evolved over the past few years in several very important ways due to new microwave instruments coming online and older sensors no longer functioning. The Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) has been almost completely replaced by the newer Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS) within the DMSP constellation, that remains a linchpin in the operational microwave observing capabilities (F-16, 17, and 18). The cessation of NASA's QuikSCAT satellite after more than a decade of service is sorely missed, but the satellite community hopes to add India's OceanSat-2 scatterometer to the near real-time data mixes during the Fall/Winter 2011-2012 timeframe. In addition, improvements to the Navy's WindSat ocean surface wind vector retrievals have enabled measurements closer to a storm's inner core with more accurate wind directions. Another Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) onboard EUMETSAT's MetOp-2 satellite is slated for launch in 2012.

Passive microwave imagery has received a much needed boost with the launch of the French/Indian Megha Tropiques imager in September 2011, basically greatly supplementing the very successful NASA TRMM pathfinder with a larger swath and more frequent temporal sampling. Future NASA Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) sensors starting in 2014 will provide enhanced capabilities. Also, the inclusion of the new microwave sounder data from the NPP ATMS (Oct 2011) will assist in mapping TC convective structures.

NRL TC web page products are now available using Google Earth compatible kml files and enable the user to accurately extract earth location information while overlaying multiple data sets for any given storm. Data fusion enhancement applications using examples from the wealth of new microwave imagers/sounders will be presented.