Part of the ASAP program Experimental tropopause folding product: As part of the ASAP program, a product has been developed that uses gradients in the water vapor channel to estimate areas of tropopause folding, which can cause turbulence. The product is compared in real time to pilot reports of turbulence in a web-based java animation.

Aqua image of Hurricane Ivan from September 12, 2004, one of the images used to make the morphed animation From the Employee News: The CIMSS Tropical Cyclone Group recently produced a new tool to monitor structure and intensity changes in tropical cyclones. The Morphed anImated Microwave Imagery (MIMI) algorithm compiles tropical cyclone imagery from five satellite instruments to create an animation that helps scientists and forecasters see the timing of the eye-wall replacement cycles. To account for the complex motion properties of a cyclone, MIMI imposes an advection scheme on the microwave signal. The scheme, a function of the cyclone’s radius and reported wind speed, blends the averaged satellite images while rotating them to create the morphed animation. During Hurricane Ivan, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) had a chance to try out the MIMI algorithm. “It really helps to see the evolution of banding features and how the low-level convergence patterns change,” Stacey Stewart with NHC said. MIMI (Morphed, anImated Microwave Imagery): The CIMSS Tropical Cyclone Group has produced a new tool that morphs sequential images of hurricanes from low-earth orbiting satellites into an animation that helps scientists and forecasters observe eyewall dynamics and trends in storm intensification.

IDEA (Infusing satellite Data into Environmental Applications) CIMSS has adapted an air quality forecasting model developed at NASA that uses MODIS channels to measure fine particulate matter (smoke, dust, air pollution) and includes a trajectory model to provide an integrated air quality forecast that is used by state and local agencies across the country.