Scientists eye new measure of hurricanes

Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 2, 2007 at midnight

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FORT COLLINS - Colorado scientists working with NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may have found a better way to estimate a hurricane's punch - by viewing it from above with new technology aboard CloudSat and other satellites.

Colorado State University professor Graeme Stephens, principal investigator for CloudSat, said new findings show the value of being able to look inside tropical storms to reveal their inner structure, a capability unique to CloudSat.

Current techniques to estimate a hurricane's intensity work pretty well but are further off on wind-speed estimates "than scientists would like," Stephens said. "This approach may reduce the error rate."

The new technique uses NASA satellite data to measure the heights of clouds and the temperature at cloud tops.

CloudSat and NASA's Aqua satellite fly in formation as part of NASA's " 'A' Train" of Earth-observing satellites. CloudSat, which launched in April 2006, flew over 150 tropical cyclones in its first six months, according to NASA.

The satellite happened to catch a good glimpse of the eye and the top of nine of the storms, say NASA officials.

The scientists, using the framework developed by Kerry Emanuel and Valerie Wong of MIT, calculated the peak wind speeds of the nine storms and compared those estimates to available weather data from aircraft and weather instruments.

They found the new technique appeared to work better for stronger storms.

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