Cold Water Trails from Hurricanes Fabian and Isabel

  • Credit

    NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Hurricane Fabian

Cold Water Trails from Hurricanes Fabian and Isabel (WMS)

The wide-angle lens of the Sea-viewing Wide-Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) instrument on the Orbview-2 satellite captured this picture of Fabian Sept. 4, 2003, near Bermuda.

This visualization shows the cold water trails left first by Hurricanes Fabian and then by Hurricane Isabel in the Atlantic Ocean from August 27, 2003 through September 23, 2003. The colors on the ocean represent the sea surface temperatures, and satellite images of the hurricane clouds are laid over the temperatures to clearly show the hurricane positions. Orange and red depict regions that are 82 degrees F and higher, where the ocean is warm enough for hurricanes to form. Hurricane winds are sustained by the heat energy of the ocean, so the ocean is cooled as the hurricane passes and the energy is extracted to power the winds. A hurricane can experience a dramatic reduction in wind speed when it crosses the cold track of a previous hurricane. However, in this case, the cold water track from Fabian warmed up before Isabel crossed it, so Isabel's winds did not decrease. The sea surface temperatures were measured by the AMSR-E instrument on the Aqua satellite, while the cloud images were taken by the Imager on the GOES-12 satellite.

Hurricanes Fabian and Isabel leave cold water trails in their wake.

Metadata

  • Sensor

    Aqua/AMSR-E, GOES/IR4, Terra/MODIS

  • Animation ID

    2897

  • Video ID

    None

  • Start Timecode

    00:00:00:00

  • End Timecode

    00:00:00:00

  • Animator

    Eric Sokolowsky, Greg Shirah, Alex Kekesi, Jesse Allen, Marte Newcombe, Stuart A. Snodgrass, Kevin Mahoney

  • Studio

    SVS

  • Visualization Date

    2004/02/11

  • Scientist

    J. Marshall Shepherd (NASA/GSFC)

  • Datasets

    Blue Marble

  • Keywords

    Hurricane

  • DLESE Subject

    Atmospheric science, Natural hazards

  • Georeference Data

    Geographic Projection: Latitude extents -25, 75. Longitude extents: -110, -10.

  • Data Date

    2003/08/27 - 2003/09/21

  • Story URL

    http://www.ssmi.com/amsr/amsr_data_description.html

  • Animation Type

    Regular