Articles

NASA has finished its campaign to study extreme rain, snow and winds of the Olympic National Forest. Scientists Walt Petersen of NASA Marshall and Robert Houze of the University of Washington narrate this inside look at the Olympic Mountain Experiment (OLYMPEX) field campaign. During the campaign, NASA and its partners gathered precipitation data through both ground and airborne instruments around the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. They measured the abundance and variety of precipitation including light rain, heavy thunderstorms, and snowfall in the coastal forest. The data collected...

To get young students reading about science, NASA is trying something different. Instead of a press release or a scientific paper, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission has launched a Japanese manga-style comic book. GPM, a satellite collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, provides global estimates of rain and snow every three hours using advanced instruments. In spring 2013, a GPM Anime Challenge was held for artists from around the world aged 13 years and up to develop an anime-themed character for teaching students about the GPM mission. By...

UPDATE 1/23/2016 5:00pm ET On January 23, 2016 at 1239 UTC (7:39 AM EST) the GPM core observatory passed above the deadly winter storm that was burying the Northeast under a deep layer of snow. As GPM passed above a band of snow was shown approaching the island of Manhattan. The winter storm was predicted to dump near record snowfall in New York city. GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) instruments showed massive amounts of moisture being transported from the Atlantic Ocean over states from New York westward through West Virginia. GPM's Radar instruments...

A series of winter storms brought more than 20 inches of rainfall to the Midwest and southeastern United States in December 2015. Massive flooding followed throughout both the regions. An animation of rainfall data from those storms was created at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This animation shows the accumulation of rainfall over the United Stated during December 2015, from the IMERG precipitation dataset. The black outline indicates the Mississippi-Missouri River basin. This version has been edited to only show the periods of significant rainfall during the month...

As we enter the new year, take a look back at the snowstorms, tropical storms, typhoons, hurricanes and floods captured and analyzed by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission from around the globe during 2015. The complete list of storms by date and location are as follows: 1. New England Nor’easter – January 26 – New England, USA 2. Snowstorm – February 17 – Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina, USA 3. Tornadic Thunderstorms in Midwest – March 25 – Oklahoma and Arkansas, USA 4. Typhoon Maysak – March 30 – Yap Islands, Southwest Pacific Ocean 5. Rain Accumulation from Cyclone...