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How TRMM and GPM Study Latent Heating
Latent heating (LH) arises predominantly from the release of heat associated with the condensation of water vapor into cloud droplets in clouds with active updrafts. Other sources of LH include ice deposition and freezing, while evaporation, melting and sublimation induce cooling, but condensation is the dominant heating term. Like a hot-air balloon, LH can keep air parcels warmer than their surrounding environment and therefore rising. On a large scale, LH is responsible for driving the ascending branch of the Hadley Circulation. LH is also an important component in the dynamics of a regional...
TMPA Shows El Niño Conditions in the Pacific
An El Niño that began to form last fall has matured and is now fully entrenched across the Pacific. Changes in sea surface temperatures, or SSTs, brought about by an El Niño affect the atmosphere, resulting in distinctive changes in the rainfall pattern across the Pacific Basin. These changes show up as anomalies or deviations in NASA’s analysis of climatological rainfall. This map shows sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies for the Pacific Basin, shown as degrees Celsius above or below average. Credit: NOAA Climate Prediction Center. In a typical El Niño, warmer than average SSTs off of the...
Finding Strong Storms with TRMM & GPM
Spring is severe storms season here in the US, but not everyone has NEXRAD radar coverage; however, NASA’s TRMM and GPM satellites with their onboard radars have made it possible to search the entire global Tropics and midlatitudes and systematically identify areas where there are strong to intense thunderstorms. Researchers now headed by Dr. Chuntao Liu at Texas A&M University have built a comprehensive database of “precipitation features” based on regions of contiguous radar echoes from first the TRMM and now the GPM satellite. These precipitation features can then be mined to locate areas...
GPM flying over Earth with a data swath visualized.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Science Mission Directorate, Earth Science Division has selected new projects from the 2018 Precipitation Measurement Missions (PMM) Science Team focus area solicitation. PMM projects focus on investigations related to satellite observations of precipitation using measurements from, but not limited to, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, GPM mission constellation partner spacecraft, and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). Specifically the PMM program supports three types of investigations: (1) The...
GPM Sees Powerful Winter Storm Grayson
Powerful Coastal Storm Brings Snow, Extreme Cold, Wind and Blizzard Conditions to the East Coast View an interactive 3D visualization of GPM data from Winter Storm Grayson in STORM Event Viewer Mobile version Cold Artic air has been keeping the vast majority of the country east of the Rockies in the deep freeze over the past week. Now a powerful coastal storm is working its way up the East Coast bringing a mixture of snow, freezing rain, high winds and blizzard conditions from as far south as Florida all the way up into Maine with blizzard warnings in effect along the coast from North Carolina...
OLYMPEX Successfully Grabs the Rains
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...
OLYMPEX Scientists in the Field
From November 10 through December 21, NASA and university scientists are taking to the field to study wet winter weather near Seattle, Washington. With weather radars, weather balloons, specialized ground instruments, and NASA's DC-8 flying laboratory, the science team will be verifying rain and snowfall observations made by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite mission on a NASA-led field campaign, The Olympic Mountain Experiment, or OLYMPEX. Rachael Kroodsma is the instrument scientist for the CoSMIR on board NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory as part of the OLYMPEX field...

Researchers Gear Up for OLYMPEX

Submitted by JacobAdmin on Thu, 11/12/2015
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The Olympic Mountain Experiment, or OLYMPEX, is a NASA-led field campaign, which will take place on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State from November 2015 through February 2016. The goal of the campaign is to collect detailed atmospheric measurements that will be used to evaluate how well rain-observing satellites measure rainfall and snowfall from space.