Owing to the advancement in numerical modeling and data assimilation, hurricane track forecast has been improved significantly in the last decade. However, hurricane intensity forecast still remains a challenging problem in both operational and research communities. Satellites provide a very useful source of data for studying hurricane intensity change. This paper examines the impact of multiple satellite observations (e.g.,these from QuickSCAT, GOES, TRMM, AIRS) on hurricane intensity forecasts with most recent case studies. The general problems, challenges and potential improvements in both hurricane intensity forecasting and satellite data assimilation are discussed. Preliminary results towards assimilation of satellite data in improving hurricane inner-core initialization are also presented.