The TROPICS smallsat tropical cyclone mission: High Temporal Resolution Microwave Imagery as Part of NASA’s Third Earth Venture-Instrument (EV-I3) Program

The Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission was recently selected by NASA as part of the Earth Venture–Instrument (EVI-3) program. The overarching goal for TROPICS is to provide nearly all-weather observations of 3-D temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high-value science investigations of tropical cyclones, including: (1) Relationships of rapidly evolving precipitation and upper cloud structures to upper-level warm-core intensity and associated storm intensity changes