Above the Clouds
More pictures from space. This time it’s NASA using satellites to look inside storm clouds, in order to predict how much water they hold and how much might fall.
The first images from a $217 million satellite project to measure the moisture content of clouds provided breathtaking views of storms on Earth, scientists said.
“For the first time we’re seeing inside the clouds,” said Graeme Stephens, a Colorado State University atmospheric sciences professor and the principal investigator for the CloudSat project. “We can see tropical storms 15 kilometers deep organized on scales of thousands of kilometers across.”
CloudSat, a formation of five satellites launched April 28, was developed by CSU researchers in conjunction with other agencies to determine the moisture content of clouds, in the hope of developing long-term precipitation models.
“We want to know how much water is in the sky so we can see how much water falls,” Stephens said.
The spacecraft are 438 miles above the Earth.
NASA, of course, has the latest photos.
