The Latest Storm-Monitoring Satellites from NASA Track Hurricane Evolution

NASA’s TROPICS constellation, made up of three pairs of satellites, works synergistically to gather microwave observations of terrestrial storms. These observations track the storm’s precipitation, temperature, and humidity as frequently as every 50 minutes. Image courtesy: NASA

The storm-monitoring satellites, the most recent in NASA’s arsenal, tracked the structural transformation of Hurricane Adrian as it gained strength.

In the last week of June 2023, the inaugural Eastern Pacific hurricane of the season, Hurricane Adrian, took form off the coast of Mexico. The hurricane directed its course northwest, steering clear of land, and was not a threat to inhabited areas. However, the hurricane did pique interest for another reason – it was the first to be monitored by NASA’s newest storm-observing satellites.

An animation demonstrates the transformation of Hurricane Adrian’s clouds from the morning of June 28 to the afternoon of June 29. In the proximity, Beatriz was morphing into a tropical storm, visible in these images as less structured clouds closer to the coast. Image courtesy: NASA

The images in the above animation and the series following were collected by the TROPICS mission – an acronym for Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats. Close to two dozen images taken by the satellites around this period were chosen for display.

“As extreme weather impacts are increasingly affecting communities worldwide, there has never been a more critical time to provide prompt data to those most in need, for the sake of livelihoods and lives,” stated NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “TROPICS will supply critical information for forecasters, aiding us all in better preparing for hurricanes and tropical storms.”

TROPICS is a cluster of four identical CubeSats, designed for the observation of tropical cyclones. These budget-friendly, milk carton-sized satellites were launched in May 2023 by Rocket Lab. Every TROPICS CubeSat houses a microwave radiometer, which gathers data across 12 channels to identify temperatures, humidity, and precipitation surrounding and within a storm.

The animation images were created from data collected by a single channel (205 gigahertz) that is responsive to ice within the clouds. Each scene displays brightness temperature, which is the radiation intensity discernible at that channel frequency moving upward from the cloud layers towards the satellites.

Low brightness temperatures (represented by blue and white) show radiation that has been scattered by ice particles within the storm clouds. The lower the temperature, the more ice is likely present in an atmospheric column. Will McCarty, program scientist for TROPICS and program manager for weather and atmospheric dynamics at NASA Headquarters, mentioned that the presence of ice in the clouds signifies intense heat and moisture movement (convection) within a storm.

Scott Braun, a research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and project scientist for TROPICS, detailed that the patterns observed in the brightness temperature data can help pinpoint rain bands, the intensity of convection, the presence of a storm eye, and how these structures are evolving over time. All these factors are crucial for predicting storm progression.

“Changes in brightness temperature structure can assist in determining if a storm is amplifying or diminishing,” mentioned Patrick Duran, the mission’s deputy program applications lead at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Such structural changes are less noticeable in natural-color images, which predominantly display cloud tops. Some features, like the storm’s eye, are often visible in microwave images before infrared sensors on other satellites can detect them.

Some of these structural changes are evident in the animation and image series. The first frame of the animation shows the storm’s developing eye on June 28, appearing as a warmer area surrounded by cooler regions associated with clouds and falling ice. Around the time of this image, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center had recently upgraded Adrian from a tropical storm to a category 1 hurricane. The storm continued to gain strength and remained a category 1 storm throughout this image series.

In the image taken at 10:58 Universal Time (4:58 a.m. local time) on June 29, the eyewall displays stronger convection, and the eye appears smaller, a common occurrence as a storm strengthens. By 22:18 Universal Time (4:18 p.m. local time) that day, strong convection is evident south of the eye, a new rainband has formed on the north side, and the eye reaches its smallest size seen in the series.

Similar microwave measurements can be made using other satellites, such as the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. However, TROPICS has a temporal advantage. While the orbits of most scientific satellites only allow storm observations every 6 to 12 hours, the low-Earth orbit and multiple satellites of TROPICS can permit storm imaging approximately once an hour. This is a significant advantage when monitoring a rapidly evolving storm.

“The frequent updates from TROPICS reveal intricate structures in the inner eye and rain bands of tropical cyclones,” said William Blackwell, the mission’s principal investigator at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. “The rapid data updates uniquely offered by TROPICS display the dynamic evolution of the storm structure and environmental conditions.”

As TROPICS continues to gather data over tropical cyclones, weather researchers will gain further insight into the environmental factors that contribute to storm structure and intensity. This information could be helpful for NOAA, the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center, and international agencies in charge of generating hurricane, typhoon, and cyclone forecasts.

NASA Earth Observatory images were created by Lauren Dauphin, using data provided by the TROPICS team.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about TROPICS satellites

More about TROPICS satellites

• NASA’s TROPICS Mission
• CubeSat Technology
• About Hurricane Adrian
• Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission
• Understanding Tropical Cyclones