Meteorologists are getting a head start on forecasting tropical storms, typhoons, hurricanes and other severe storms thanks to a new ocean-viewing radar, called SeaWinds, aboard NASA's QuickScat spacecraft.
"The spacecraft and its SeaWinds instrument are performing fabulously," said Jim Graf, QuikScat mission manager at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Since it began its science mission in June, SeaWinds has performed better than expected by providing a portrait of wind speeds around the globe.
SeaWinds captured Typhoon Olga in its infancy last week, measuring daily wind speeds and direction as it progressed from a tropical depression on July 28, east of the Philippines, to a raging typhoon in the China Sea.
Torrential rains poured down in South Korea, North Korea and other coastal communities in south Asia. Olga delivered winds of more than 50 knots (57 miles an hour), flooded farmlands, shut down highways and railways and forced at least 15,000 people in Seoul, South Korea, to evacuate their homes.
"SeaWinds is allowing scientists to determine the location, structure and strength of these tropical depressions, typhoons and severe marine storms very quickly as they develop," said Dr. Timothy Liu, QuikScat project scientist at JPL.
"Fifteen times a day, the satellite beams science data to ground stations, which then relay the information to scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Early notification can help meteorologists and disaster preparedness services disseminate information within hours and give people more warning of a storm's severity and likely path," said Liu.
SeaWinds is currently watching another tropical depression, named 12W, which developed west of Mariana Island in the tropical Pacific. It is heading northwest toward the Asian continent. The radar has also picked up a series of intense winter storms brewing around Antarctica.
Because of its ability to monitor winds and their interaction with both the ocean's surface and large ice sheets, SeaWinds is helping shed new light on the relationship between the atmosphere, ocean, land and ice with Earth's global climate system.
"Typhoons and monsoons have strong economic and environmental impacts in Japan," said Dr. Naoto Ebuchi of Tohoku University, Japan, who is participating in calibration testing of QuikScat at JPL. "Japanese scientists should have a strong interest in the QuikScat observations."
"SeaWinds' unprecedented coverage, high resolution and accuracy, are already providing unique information on Earth's atmosphere and ocean," said. Dr. Michael Freilich, science team leader at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "In the coming months and years, we expect that SeaWinds measurements will play an increasingly important role in weather prediction, oceanographic research and climate studies."
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology manages the SeaWinds radar instrument for NASA's Office of Earth Science in Washington, D.C. JPL also built SeaWinds and is providing ground science processing systems. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., managed development of the satellite, designed and built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo. NOAA has contributed support to ground systems processing and related activities.
Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network