Cyclone Impact Terra 2008/122 05/01/08 04:35 UTC

Cyclone Impact - Conclusions The data sets are immediately laid out on the PO.DAAC site. Deciding on which data set to use requires reading the data guides (is this surprising?). Some links inactive. The hurricane tracking section is comprehensive. The Jason-1 data seems reasonably easy to locate and decode. A lot of TLAs on the Jason-1 page. No ocean color, or link, at PO.DAAC. However the gsfc site is very easy to use. No PO.DAAC search. Most searches on JPL page return hits for “Cassini-Huygens”.

Steps needed 1.Overview – I would start with getting some tracking information and maybe some observations. I know of operational sites that track hurricanes as well as the Modis rapid response site. Noaa might have a buoy or two in the Indian Ocean. That should do for starters. 2.Identify data sets – an overview of meteorological data from analyses would be good, although analyses are as a rule synoptic scale and not hurricane scale. I would expect to get met analyses from NCAR. The specific ocean products would then be (a.) sea level, (b.) wave heights, and (c.) ocean color. I can guess (a.) Jason, (b.) SAR, or a forecasting center, and (c.) seawifs?? I don’t know too much about ocean color. I’ll search for these at PO-DAAC and browse for others. 3.Results. Strategy 1.Start with data sources that I know about. 2.Search away.

This is what I can typically find in a pinch. Overview Information This is what I can typically find in a pinch. 6-hourly cyclone tracking information and max wind speed Max wind speed 115 mph on 6UTC, May 2. Modis ndbc.noaa.govndbc.noaa.gov Noaa National Data Buoy Center Aqua 1km NDVI 05/05/08 Aqua 1km NDVI 04/27/08

Identify data sets MeteorologyMeteorology – I would look for ECMWF operational analyses, if available (high resolution) from As of Sept 16, the first half of 2008 are in. This requires: NCAR Mass-stor account Familiarity with unpacking software (NCL). NCEP reanalyses from NOAA Climate Analysis Branch - (for NCEP II, wait one year).

Jason-1 ocean elevation anomaly & significant wave height: After a while, I identified cycle 232, J1SSHA files available from ftp and there’s a reference manual. C/IDL for reading. On the web page, I stayed away from things I didn’t know. J1SSHA seems like what I want, but not sure… Stumbled across 10-day image archive..

Hurricane Met data from PO.DAAC Link to radar precip, flyover animations, etc. After tedium with the data download, I notice a link to cyclones and try it. Bingo…

Fruitless search for ocean color at PO.DAAC. I type “ocean color” into Google and take the first hit. This is a friendly-looking web page. There’s a hurricanes page with good imagery. The interactive image searching page looks do- able, and links to hdf files of the data are given. This looks pretty good.

Some Conclusions I did not expect to find met data, scatterometer winds, etc. at PO.DAAC. The hurricane tracking section is comprehensive. The Jason-1 data seems reasonably easy to locate and decode. I did expect to find ocean color, or a link, at PO.DAAC. However the gsfc site is very easy to use. Most searches on PO.DAAC page return hits for “Cassini-Huygens”.