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MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
INTERNET ADVISORY
September 22, 1999
UNUSUALLY HOT, COLD OCEANS CREATE CORRIDOR FOR MORE STORMS
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Three current storms captured by a NASA satellite show how
unusual sea temperatures are creating a clear corridor in the
Atlantic for more to come.
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New SeaWinds scatterometer imagery taken by NASA's QuikScat
satellite shows tropical storms Harvey in the Gulf of Mexico and
Hilary in the Pacific, along with Hurricane Gert near Bermuda, as
they spun over the ocean on September 20. The storms are being
powered by abnormally warm Atlantic sea-surface temperatures and
cold Pacific waters, said Dr. Timothy Liu, SeaWinds project
scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. The
new animation is available at
http://haifung.jpl.nasa.gov/interesting-phenomena/movies/990920pm-3in1-s.mov
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"Temperatures in the Atlantic are about 2 to 4 degrees
warmer than normal right now, while the Pacific Ocean is
relatively cold," said Dr. Timothy Liu, SeaWinds project
scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.
"Those conditions have forced the jet stream much farther north
and created a corridor for newly born hurricanes to move
unimpeded toward the Atlantic coast."
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With winds reported by the National Hurricane Center of up
to 120 kilometers per hour (75 miles per hour) on September 21,
Hurricane Gert appears in orange and yellow. Tropical Storm
Hilary, downgraded from a hurricane earlier this week, can be
seen in yellow off the coast of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, and
Tropical Storm Harvey, also in yellow, is situated in the Gulf of
Mexico. Blues indicate low wind speeds in the animation, while
magentas represent medium wind speeds. The motion of the arrows
denotes wind direction.
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The orbiting SeaWinds radar instrument is managed for NASA's
Earth Science Enterprise, Washington, DC, by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, which also built the SeaWinds radar instrument and is
providing ground science processing systems. NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, managed development of the QuikScat
satellite, designed and built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies
Corp., Boulder, CO. NOAA has contributed support to ground
systems processing and related activities. JPL is a division of
the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. This text derived from http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/99/3hurricanes.html
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