NOAA 97-25

CONTACT:  Patricia Viets               FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                       5/6/97

FORECASTERS GAIN ABILITY TO MORE ACCURATELY PREDICT HURRICANES

NOAA launches operational program to distribute information on winds over the oceans.

Weather forecasters will be able to more accurately predict the path and intensity of hurricanes, winter storms and other weather systems that form over the world's oceans with data obtained from the Japanese satellite ADEOS. Oceanic surface wind measurements of wind direction and speed will be used in numerical computer models, and will give forecasters another valuable tool.

The Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has now completed preparations to distribute this important information to meteorologists in various countries.

"The NSCAT dataset represents a major breakthrough in our ability to alert mariners of weather hazards at sea," said Jim Hoke, director of NOAA's Marine Prediction Center. "The high accuracy and spatial resolution of the data were quickly recognized by our forecasters, who have been starved for data over significant expanses of the world's oceans. We're looking forward to incorporating the data into our daily forecast and warning operations."

The wind information is from data observed by the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT), built and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The NSCAT instrument is carried on the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite developed, launched and operated by the National Space Development Agency (NASDA) of Japan.

As part of a tri-agency agreement with NASA and NASDA, NOAA will produce and distribute, within three hours of measurement, wind vector information from data captured at the three ADEOS ground stations -- the Alaska Search and Rescue Facility at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia; and the NASDA Earth Observation Center in Hatoyama, Japan.

The NOAA operational products are merged wind vectors and radar backscatter values at 25KM resolution, for each orbit of ADEOS. Through its Central Environmental Satellite Computer System facility near Washington, D.C., NOAA will continuously deliver digital products from each of 14 daily ADEOS orbits. The products will be used by United States, Japanese and European operational meteorological services for noncommercial, environmental monitoring and prediction purposes.

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Note to Editors: An image of the "First Operational Global Wind Vector Product from ADEOS/NSCAT" is available to editors by calling NOAA/NESDIS PA. (This is a color gridded image of orbital swaths of wind data depicted in knots. The caption reads: "FIRST NOAA-NASA-NASDA NSCAT GLOBAL OPERATIONAL OCEAN SURFACE WINDS - April 16, 1997." Below this, a smaller caption reads: "Processed by NOAA/NESDIS." The NOAA logo is in the upper right.)

This picture can be browsed or downloaded from the World Wide Web at: http://manati.wwb.noaa.gov/group/nscatpr.html

Legislative offices should call: Jim Schufreider.

NOAA constituents should call: Joyce Gross.