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Saturday, September 09, 2017

Hurricane Irma over Cuba | NASA Earth


The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a natural-color image of Irma (below) at 10:00 a.m. local time (16:00 Universal Time) on September 8, 2017.

The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Center remarked on the storm’s “buzzsaw appearance.” The National Weather Service field office in Miami warned of “large airborne projectiles” and cautioned that some locations may be “uninhabitable for weeks or months” after the storm. Eric Blake, a meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center, simply tweeted that he had “never seen anything like this in the modern record” and that the forecast made him “sick to his stomach.”

In some respects, Irma is an unusual and record-breaking storm. On September 8, the storm had generated more accumulated cyclone energy—a term meteorologists use to describe the destructive potential of a hurricane—than any other Atlantic storm on record, according to meteorologist Philip Klotzbach of Colorado State University. Irma also broke a record for generating the most accumulated cyclone energy in a 24-hour period.

“Our human assets and aircraft penetrations are critical but limited,” said Marshall Shepherd, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Georgia. “Satellites provide a unique perspective on clouds, rainfall, sea surface state, sea surface temperature, and more. Only the satellite vantage point can provide continuous coverage of all three storms without having to refuel or sleep.”

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image via Terra MODIS data from the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE)
Story Credit: Adam Voiland
Instrument: Terra - MODIS
Image Date: September 8, 2017
Release Date: September 9, 2017


#NASA #NOAA #Earth #Science #Space #Satellite #Hurricane #Irma #Caribbean #Sea #Atlantic #Ocean #Cuba #Bahamas #Florida #UnitedStates #Weather #Storm #Terra #MODIS #Goddard #GSFC #STEM #Education

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