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The TRMM satellite passed almost directly above powerful typhoon MA-ON on 14 July 2011 at 0525 UTC. This TRMM orbit revealed that MA-ON was extremely well organized with several bands of intense thunderstorms around a well defined eye.
Photo taken by Scott Collis of the of Argonne National Laboratory.
View Scott Collis' Flickr Page
View the ARM Flickr Page
Photo taken by Scott Collis of the of Argonne National Laboratory.
View Scott Collis' Flickr Page
View the ARM Flickr Page
(updated 1/13/14)
TRMM and GPM rely on active and passive instruments to measure the properties of precipitation from space.
Active radars, such as the TRMM Precipitation Radar, transmit and receive signals reflected back to the radar. The signal returned to the radar receiver (called radar reflectivity) provides a measure of the size and number of rain/snow drops at multiple vertical layers in the cloud (Left figure).
Note the tube-like condensation funnel, attached to the rotating cloud base, surrounded by a translucent dust cloud.
Source: NOAA, Wikimedia Commons
Centered at the SGP Central Facility, research aircraft will fly above and within the clouds while radar systems scan through the storm from multiple locations. At the same time, additional ground-based instruments will measure surface precipitation and wind speed.
Source: ARM Climate Research Facility
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this true-color image on February 7, 2010.
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
