Friday, 26 May 2000: 5:00 PM
Better tropical cyclone intensity predictions require accurate
measurement of storm wind speeds. Buoys, aircraft, and various visual and
enhanced IR imagery techniques are used to determine the winds in
tropical cylcones. In contrast to sparse observations or to the
limitations of visible and IR imagery, microwave scatterometers can see
through clouds to measure winds at the ocean surface. Significantly more
observations are available from scatterometers even though rain
scattering and rain induced sea-surface roughening may affect wind
retrievals. QuikScat, a conical scanning radar scatterometer, was
launched summer 1999 in time for the tropical storm season. We
demonstrate that QuikScat wind vector measurements from outside the rain
band regions can be used to estimate the sustained wind speed and
therefore the intensity of a tropical storm. Prior to using QuikScat
winds, the data require validation by comparison with other available
wind measurements. In this talk, we present our comparison results and
estimate the quality of QuikScat winds within selected Atlantic and
Pacific tropical cyclones.
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