".... one satellite—Cloudsat—peered inside the storm and observed its
vertical structure. It did so with acloud-profiling radar that sent
pulses of energy toward Earth and recorded the strength of the signal that
bounced off ice and water particles."
"....The bottom map shows the storm as
observed by Cloudsat around 2 p.m. local time (18:00 Universal Time) on October
29, 2012. The image shows a cross-section—what the storm would look like if it had
been sliced near the middle and viewed from the side. (Watch this animation to see how Cloudsat collects data).... "
Image: Vertical "cut-away" of storm precipitation:
" ... The top image, acquired the same day by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on
the Aqua satellite, is shown for reference.
The yellow line is the north-to-south track that CloudSat took over the storm.
In the Cloudsat data, the
darkest blues represent areas where clouds and raindrops reflected the
strongest signal back to the satellite radar. These areas had the heaviest
precipitation and the largest water droplets. The blue line in the center of
the image is the freezing line; ice particles formed above it, raindrops
below..."
Credits:
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using CloudSat FirstLook data provided courtesy of the CloudSat team at Colorado State University. Caption by Adam Voiland.
- Instrument:
- CloudSat - CPR
