A Rare Glimpse Into the Eye of Typhoon Dolphin

To remote smell scientists , peering directly into the eye of a tropical tempest is like hitting a hole in one . That ’s exactly what NASA’sCloudSatsatellite did on May 16th , fill in a arresting overpass of Typhoon Dolphin as the category 4 tempest churned across the west Pacific .

CloudSat , which comprise part of NASA ’s world - orbiting observatory , sends pulses of microwave energy through our major planet ’s atmosphere , some of which is shine back to the spacecraft . Conceptually , CloudSat is alike to another putz we look at last week , RapidScat , which NASA use for chromosome mapping wind instrument fastness and commission . The strength of the signal CloudSat receives is related to the amount of ice or weewee in a cloud , while the time hold can be used to calculate the distance between the cloud and the Earth ’s surface .

In the figure directly below the aerial view of Typhoon Dolphin , we see the storm in cross section , with sinister blue air representing heavier hurry . compound this data with infrared image collected from Japan ’s MTSTAT orbiter , investigator produced another crabbed - sectional opinion of the storm ’s eye and its overall swarm structure :

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What ’s amazing about these images is that CloudSat , scanning the full land , has a field of prospect of just 0.5 square statute mile . zero in on a tropic tempest is unmanageable enough , but most cyclones are over 250 miles wide , while the eye of the storm is a small fraction of that size . A hole in one , indeed .

[ NASA|NASA Earth Observatory ]

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