NASA Offers a Real-Time 3-D Look at the Inside of Hurricanes
Seeing how rain falls from top to bottom and how heavy the rain
falls throughout parts of a tropical cyclone is very important
to hurricane forecasters. NASA has sped up the process of
getting this data within three hours, and making it appear in
3-D. The new process now gives information quickly enough for
forecasters to use. Image left: The image on the left shows the
intensity of rainfall in a tropical cyclone. The colorbar above
the image shows millimeters of rainfall per hour, with reds
being the heaviest rainfall. The image on the right shows a 3-D
structure of rain in tropical cyclones. The highest cloud tower
on the image reaches 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) high. Click here
to view a higher resolution copy of this image. Credit: NASA
Scientists at NASA have developed a way to process radar data
from NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA)
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite that can
help with forecasting chang