First Images From Cloudsat | Universe Today

Written by Fraser Cain

Meteorologists and scientists have a new tool at their disposal; NASA's new CloudSat satellite, which is capable of building 3-D images of clouds. CloudSat launched on April 28 from Vandenberg Air Force Base with two other satellites. After several weeks of testing, mission managers tested its Cloud-Profiling Radar system in May. Its first image was a slice of atmosphere above the North Sea in the Atlantic Ocean. CloudSat's radar system is 1,000 times more powerful than typical weather radar.

Mission managers tested the flight and ground system performance of the satellite's Cloud-Profiling Radar in late May, and found it to be working perfectly. The satellite's first images may be viewed at: http://www.nasa.gov/cloudsat .

"CloudSat's radar performed flawlessly, and although the data are still very preliminary, it provided breathtaking new views of the weather on our planet," said Dr. Graeme Stephens, CloudSat principal investigator and a professor at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. "All major cloud system types were observed, and the radar demonstrated its ability to penetrate through almost all but the heaviest rainfall.

"We have now begun continuous radar operations, and we look forward to releasing our first validated data to the science community within nine months, hopefully sooner," he added.

Just 30 seconds after radar activation, CloudSat obtained its first image – a slice of the atmosphere from top to bottom showing a warm storm front over the North Sea in the North Atlantic approaching Greenland. Unlike other satellite observations, the CloudSat radar image shows the storm's clouds and precipitation simultaneously. The front's warm air can be seen rising over colder air, with precipitation below.

The remaining orbits of the test recorded unique observations of other weather types on a scale never seen before. The radar obtained first-time observations of clouds and snow storms over the Antarctic. Until now, clouds have been hard to observe in polar regions using satellite remote sensing, particularly during the polar night season. The CloudSat observations also provided new views of sloping, frontal clouds and thunderstorms over Africa, both as individual storms and as part of larger tropical storm systems.

"We're seeing the atmosphere as we've never seen it before," said Deborah Vane, CloudSat deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We're no longer looking at clouds like images on a flat piece of paper, but instead we're peering into the clouds and seeing their layered complexity."

The first-ever spaceborne millimeter wavelength radar, CloudSat's Cloud-Profiling Radar is more than 1,000 times more sensitive than typical weather radar. It can observe clouds and precipitation in a way never before possible, distinguishing between cloud particles and precipitation. Its measurements are expected to offer new insights into how fresh water is created from water vapor and how much of this water falls to the surface as rain and snow.

CloudSat was launched April 28 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., along with NASA's Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations satellite. Both satellites will orbit 705 kilometers (438 miles) above Earth aboard NASA's "A-Train" constellation of five Earth Observing System satellites. The A-Train satellites will work together to provide new insights into the global distribution and evolution of clouds to improve weather forecasting and climate prediction.

CloudSat is managed by JPL, which developed the radar instrument with hardware contributions from the Canadian Space Agency. Colorado State University provides scientific leadership and science data processing and distribution. Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo., designed and built the spacecraft. The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Department of Energy contributed resources. U.S. and international universities and research centers support the mission science team.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release