Scatterometer captures Pacific typhoons

17 Jun 2002

The first images of winds over the oceans taken by the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) science instrument onboard Japan's Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) show two typhoons in the northwest Pacific Ocean as they were seen on September 20.

The scatterometer takes 190,000 wind measurements per day, mapping more than 90 percent of the world's ice-free oceans every two days. The instrument will provide more than 100 times the amount of ocean wind information currently available from ship reports. Information gathered by the scatterometer is being used by the National Weather Service, an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Japanese Meteorological Agency. Ocean surface wind measurements, used in numerical computer models, will help weather forecasters more accurately predict the path and intensity of hurricanes, winter storms and other weather systems that form over the oceans.