Table of Contents

Satellites

First images from CloudSat

• Warm Front Storm Over the Norwegian Sea on May 20, 2006
• Tropical Thunderstorms Over Africa on May 20, 2006
• Polar Night Storm Near Antarctica on May 20, 2006

Warm Front Storm Over the Norwegian Sea on May 20, 2006

The above image showing cloud coverage over the Norwegian Sea was taken by MODIS, an instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite. The yellow A-B vector shows CloudSat's track at nearly the same time. This yellow line indicates the top of the image below.

In this cross-section of clouds, red colors are indicative of highly reflective particles such as water droplets (or rain) or larger ice crystals (or snow), while the blue indicates thinner clouds (such as cirrus). The flat green/blue lines across the bottom represent the ground signal. The straight blue line above the alphanumeric data indicates that the data were taken over water.

Tropical Thunderstorms Over Africa on May 20, 2006

The above image showing cloud coverage over east Africa was taken by MODIS, an instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite. The yellow A-B vector shows CloudSat's track at nearly the same time. This yellow line indicates the top of the image below.

In this cross-section of tropical clouds and thunderstorms over east Africa, the red colors are indicative of highly reflective particles such as water (rain) or ice crystals, while the blue indicates thinner clouds (such as cirrus). The flat green/blue lines across the bottom represent the ground signal.

Polar Night Storm Near Antarctica on May 20, 2006

The above image showing cloud coverage over Antarctica was taken by MODIS, an instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite. The yellow A-B vector shows CloudSat's track at nearly the same time. This yellow line indicates the top of the image below.

CloudSat image of a polar night storm near Antarctica. Until now, clouds have been hard to observe in polar regions using remote sensing, particularly during the polar winter or night season. The red colors are indicative of highly reflective particles such as water (rain) or ice crystals, while the blue indicates thinner clouds (such as cirrus). The flat green/blue lines across the bottom represent the ground signal.