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QuikSCAT's sea winds facilitates early identification of tropical depressions in 1999 hurricane season
Author(s) -
Katsaros Kristina B.,
Forde Evan B.,
Chang Paul,
Liu W. Timothy
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2000gl011646
Subject(s) - tropical cyclone , scatterometer , climatology , atlantic hurricane , satellite , tropical wave , environmental science , geostationary orbit , tropical atlantic , meteorology , sea surface temperature , tropical cyclone scales , geology , wind speed , geography , cyclone (programming language) , computer hardware , engineering , field programmable gate array , aerospace engineering , computer science
Far from land and surface ship observations, most tropical depressions are identified by examining images from geostationary satellites for the presence of rotation of the convective cloud masses. During the 1999 hurricane season, surface wind vectors obtained by the SeaWinds scatterometer on the QuikSCAT satellite for the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea were examined to test the hypothesis that developing tropical depressions (TDs) could be observed with this satellite sensor, before identification by the traditional means. QuikSCAT was able to detect the presence of closed circulation in the surface winds before the systems were designated as depressions. The satellite's unprecedented large swath width of 1800 km allows twice a day observation of most of the tropical oceans. SeaWinds data can, therefore, provide valuable guidance that are an important addition to the tools available to the tropical cyclone forecasting community.