Typhoon Halong continued to strengthen and has become a super typhoon in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean.
Infrared imagery from an instrument aboard NASA’s Terra revealed a thick ring of very high, powerful storms with very cold cloud top temperatures circling the eye.
Tropical cyclones are made of up hundreds of thunderstorms, and infrared data can show where the strongest storms are located. They can do that because infrared data provides temperature information, and the strongest thunderstorms that reach highest into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures.
On Nov. 5 at 6:40 a.m. EST (1140 UTC), the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA’s Terra satellite used infrared light to analyze the strength of storms within the tropical cyclone. MODIS found the strongest storms in the very thick and large area of thunderstorms circling Halong’s eight nautical-mile wide eye. Those storms had cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 Celsius). NASA research has found that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms with the potential to generate heavy rainfall.
Read more at NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center
Image: On Nov. 5 at 6:40 a.m. EST (1140 UTC), the MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA’s Terra satellite showed a thick band of powerful thunderstorms surrounding Halong’s open eye. Those storms had cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than (in yellow/light green) minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 Celsius). Credit: NASA/NRL
