Image Narration | North Pacific Storm Listen as Steve Wofsy,
Principal Investigator for the HIPPO project, explains what is
going on in the image of a storm forming in the north Pacific
Basin. This image shows one of the major places in the
atmosphere where storms are generated in the north part of the
Pacific Ocean during the winter time. What you’re seeing there
is a major storm that’s being generated right before your eyes.
Those little arrows are showing you which way the wind is
blowing and how fast. The little tails on the arrows, at the
back-end of the arrows, so you can see across the middle of the
figure that the wind is blowing air from the tropics coming
around in a big circle, in a vortex, and being wrapped around
the cold air coming from the north and forming a major storm.
These storms are very important for the weather of the continent
that we live on, North America, and they’re also very important
for moving the greenhouse gases around in the atmosphere. So
when our airplane passed through thi