- Original Caption Released with Image:
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Figure 1
CloudSat image of a horizontal cross-section of a polar night storm near
Antarctica. Until now, clouds have been hard to observe in polar regions
using remote sensing, particularly during the polar winter or night season.
The red colors are indicative of highly reflective particles such as water
(rain) or ice crystals, while the blue indicates thinner clouds (such as cirrus).
The flat green/blue lines across the bottom represent the ground signal.
The vertical scale on the CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar image is approximately
30 kilometers (19 miles). The blue line below the Cloud Profiling Radar image
indicates that the data were taken over water; the brown line below the image
indicates the relative elevation of the land surface. The inset image shows the
CloudSat track relative to a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) infrared image taken at nearly the same time.
- Image Credit:
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NASA/JPL/The Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA),
Colorado State University
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