NASA’s Aqua satellite and RapidScat instrument analyzed Super typhoon Soudelor’s extent and winds as it reached Category Five typhoon status on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale.
RapidScat is a NASA instrument that flies aboard the International Space Station. RapidScat gathered surface wind speed and direction data on Soudelor on Aug. 3 at 1900 UTC (3 p.m. EDT) when it just west of Mariana Islands. RapidScat measured saw the strongest sustained winds circled the center. Sustained winds at that time were near 135 knots (155 mph/250 kph).
On Aug. 4 at 4:10 UTC (12:10 a.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured a visible-light image of Super typhoon Soudelor that clearly showed its 12-nautical-mile-wide eye. Thick bands of powerful thunderstorms surrounded the storm and spiraled into the center.
At 0900 (5 a.m. EDT), Super typhoon Soudelor had maximum sustained winds near 140 knots (161.1 mph/ 259.3 kph). Those typhoon-force winds stretched out up to 40 miles from the center, while tropical-storm-force winds extended 185 miles from the center. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects the storm to maintain that intensity for another 24 hours.
Soudelor was located near 18.6 North latitude and 138.8. East longitude, about 750 nautical miles (863 miles/1,389 km) from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. Soudelor was moving to the west-northwest at 13 knots (14.9 mph/24.0 kph).
This super typhoon was generating extremely rough seas, with maximum significant wave height to 48 feet (14.6 meters)!
The Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast takes Soudelor on a west-northwesterly path near the Japanese island of Ishigakijima on August 7 and then over northern Taiwan before making landfall in southeastern China on August 8.
The storm is predicted to weaken as it continues on its trek to the west-northwest. Interests in the path of this Super typhoon should prepare for storm surge, heavy rainfall, mudslides in high terrain areas, and typhoon-force winds.
For forecast warnings from the Japan Meteorological Agency, visit: http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/indexe.html. For warnings and watches for Taiwan, visit the Central Weather Bureau website:http://www.cwb.gov.tw/eng/. For warnings in China, visit the China Meteorological Administration website: http://www.cma.gov.cn/en.
###
Well, certainly don’t want to poo-poo anything from NASA called “RapidScat”.
Who comes up with these names?
Yeah, ever since the first time I saw that term it comes to mind every time I let the dogs out and see them race into the woods to relieve themselves
It’s short of “scatterometer”. An unfortunate abbreviation, I’ll grant.,
“RapidScat’ is what we have been getting from NASA for a long time.
My first thought is : “That must be caused by Climate Change”!
It is from the el nino conditions and when it is over, look to see the SST warmth and activity move to the equatorial Atlantic and Gulf of Mex. (if I understand Joe Bastardi correctly).
Izzis the super typhoon that was supposed to engulf the entire Hawaiian Island chain smack dab down the middle. That was the way it was depicted on my weather news just the other night. Couldn’t have targeted the islands better if it had been steered there by Obama hisself.
But on tonight’s weather news, it looks like the storm had its own plans, and it looks like it is going to stir the hell out of the sands of French Frigate Shoals instead. Well that’s a bummer; another disaster that didn’t pan out so well.
g
But it would be nice to know just exactly where this Sayonara typhoon is out there.
Cat 2 – we like the sound of that.
Chōnglàng de zuìduō
(surf’s up!)
And when it hits mountainous Taiwan it will be quickly ground down.
Thanks, Anthony. What a storm!
So do we have a full earth photo. from the million mile eye in the sky, showing how much of earth’s half surface this cat 5 covers ??
Mr. GES
Yes we do
http://static.stuff.co.nz/1438653855/643/12349643.jpg
It will be interesting to watch the SST after this much energy is expended.
Nice image.
The albedo must be quite high.
Thanks for that, Vuk. It must be one hell of a storm – its distorted the whole Earth…. !
Good shot- and there’s another push to the westerly winds on the Equator feeding El Nino.
Thank you Vuk. That is a very impressive photo with all the cloud bands showing. Constantly amazing to see the earth looking just like the weather animations.
Thanks vuc. Glad somebody is on top of this.
g >> G
“””””…..
John F. Hultquist
August 5, 2015 at 2:05 pm
Nice image.
The albedo must be quite high. …..”””””
Well that is an optical illusion.
So there is a lot of white and it all looks very bright. The multiple refractive scattering by water droplets or ice crystals, results in the near collimated (30 min divergence) solar beam being converted to a nearly perfectly diffused large area source.
When viewed from afar, the luminous intensity follows the Lambert cosine law:
I(theta) = I(0) cos (theta)
But the projected area of the source also is scaled by cos (theta), from simple geometry.
As a result, a diffuse Lambertian object has a constant radiance or luminance, in the visual case.
It looks equally ” bright ” from any direction. For a planar source, the ” brightness ” or luminance remains constant right up to the point where the source disappears because it is edge on.
So that is why all those puffy clouds in vuk’s photo look equally bright, all the way to the edge of the disk.
The actual visual flux coming towards the observer, from those edges, is extremely small, but it appears to come from an extremely small source area so the luminance is constant over the whole image (for the cloud elements). Any wisp of cloud anywhere in the picture looks equally bright as any other wisp of cloud.
So John’s comment that the albedo might be high, could be true, but you can’t determine that from this picture. Your eyes are fooling you.
g
Forgot to add.
luminance = lumens per steradian per square meter, or alternatively candela per square meter.
g
I wonder what the CO2 levels look like from a CAT-5 hurricane. If only NASA would show us the OCO-2 satellite data …
Here is a great loop of an eyewall replacement cycle this storm did the other day. I hope it works.
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop_timestamp.asp?data_folder=himawari-8%2Fhimawari-8_band_03_sector_04&width=1020&height=720&ending_image=himawari-8_band_03_sector_04_20150803071700.gif&starting_image=himawari-8_band_03_sector_04_20150802231500.gif&loop_speed_ms=100
The nullschool animation will work
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-231.64,18.83,3000
Or not!
Way cool!!! It took a while to build on my computer but it was so worth the wait! Thanks!
“Way cool??”
Sorry, Pamela, you got a ‘D-‘ for that last assignment, and will be in detention for the next four days.
Love the gravity waves in the CDO!
ossqss,
Thanks for that.
Does anyone have specifics as to how much the max wind speed drops when such an eye wall replacement such as this occurs?
Looking at http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-227.77,16.16,3000
The eyewall windspeed is peaking at 70 mph and is approx. 100 nautical miles in diameter and 20 to 30 nautical miles thick.
The eye is at 6-15 mph some 40 odd (n)miles away.
Outside of the wall the wind is 100-135 mph for 10 to 20 nautical miles
Yesterday’s eyewall was peaking out at 97 mph or so and was much thicker with similar wind conditions on the outside and inside. looks like a 25% or better drop but I suck at math.
Very interesting to look at the higher elevations too.
Here is a recent summary. The reference is in knots and it is expected to peak again at 120 knots. It was at 155+knots at one point. 1 knot = 1.151 mph.
http://www.usno.navy.mil/NOOC/nmfc-ph/RSS/jtwc/warnings/wp1315prog.txt
Nice animation, Ossqss.
Sorry, was that animation of the cyclone, or a 3 billion-year animation of the Milky Way galaxy?? just wonderin’.
1 knot is 1852 m / hr AKA 1 nautical mile per hour. 1 nautical used to be one minute of arc on the equator; making the equatorial circumference 21600 Nautical miles.
Also sometimes described as 1,000 fathoms, making a fathom 1.852 metre or 6.076… feet.
Well it’s all some of those things perhaps.
Thanks oss and dawt great stuff!
There goes the heat.
Nice video from ISS:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/apr/02/international-space-station-typhoon-maysak-video
What happens to the sea surface temperature along the cyclone path?
The SST will drop behind the cyclone because it is a heat engine that extracts energy from the ocean, moving it to the upper troposphere where it is more easily radiated into outer space.
yes…
(sigh…) no – where it gets expended by converting to rain & wind.
1)The tops of tropical cyclones, just like MCCs (Mesoscale Convective Complexes), thunderstorms & other deep convection, is COLD not hot.
2)There is LESS OLR (Outgoing Longwave Radiation) not more.
3)Deep clouds BLOCK OLR, they don’t enhance it.
The mantra of deep convection enhancing OLR ranks right up there with the silliness of deserts freezing at night in the summer. They do no such thing & anyone who took just a small bit of time to look up observations would see that (there is only about a 30F swing from Max to Min)…but that requires effort and it’s easier to just repeat a lie.
Now, if anyone can produce some references to back up that claim of deep convection enhancing OLR (and no one has done that yet), then we can talk. Till then…
Do wise up, folks.
/rant
(sigh…) no – where it gets expended by converting to rain & wind.
And the energy liberated by condensation and wind turns into…. er….heat, and is radiated to space.
REPLY to JK
Too simple by far.
While the measured temperature goes down, where did (or will) the energy go?
>>JK
>>Deep clouds BLOCK OLR, they don’t enhance it.
I don’t agree. Thin layer clouds are the best at blocking OLR. On a cold winter’s night, a thin stratus layer just a thousand feet thick under a high pressure system will prevent the surface temperature dropping by as much as 10ºc – over a huge region. Been there, flown though it a thousand times.
Conversely a huge thunderstorm will take surface heat and throw it way up into the stratosphere, where there is far less CO2 and H2O to block the OLR.
The half atmosphere point it at 18,000 ft.
The quarter atmosphere level is at 35,00 ft.
Northern latitude storms top out at 35,000′. Tropical storms top out at 50 or 60,000 ft. LR even at only 35,000′ has only 25% of the ‘insulating’ back-scattering atmospheric blanket to deal with, and can easily radiate that energy away into space.
http://www.recreationalflying.com/tutorials/metimages/pressgradient.gif
Ralph
” Thin layer clouds are the best at blocking OLR”
Mr. Ellis- Does what you wrote have anything to do with the albedo of the underside of stratus vs.Rain producing clouds types? Or is LR not affected by albedo?
@tty –
NO!
@JHultquist-
Reading is fundamental…I guess I have to do all the heavy lifting around here
1) Tellus Volume 12, Issue 1, pages 1–20, February 1960 “On the Dynamics and Energy Transformations in Steady-State Hurricanes”
“The tropical hurricane is a thermally driven circulation whose primary energy source is release of latent heat of condensation. This heating acts to establish the pressure gradients which produce and maintain hurricane winds.”
2) Monthly Weather Review Vol 136, Issue 12, p 4882 – “Tropical Cyclone Inner-Core Kinetic Energy Evolution”
3)http://www.prh.noaa.gov/cphc/pages/FAQ/Winds_and_Energy.php
Notice – in all those references, not one mention of *any* IR radiation release to space as part of the process.
@rafellis –
That is your choice – but in your write-up, you seem to ignore the extreme cold of tropical deep convection cloud tops. That (obviously) means there is *less* energy in LWIR to be released into space, not more.
Again, my 3 indisputable points:
1)The tops of tropical cyclones, just like MCCs (Mesoscale Convective Complexes), thunderstorms & other deep convection, are COLD not hot.
2)There is LESS OLR (Outgoing Longwave Radiation) not more.
3)Deep clouds BLOCK OLR, they don’t enhance it.
JKrob
“… ranks right up there with the silliness of deserts freezing at night in the summer.”
Can I send you pictures of ice on my horse water buckets in early September with the day time temperatures still 85 degrees F in the Utah deserts?
Or from the Nevada high desert in mid summer with daytime temperature over 90 degrees F but ice on the water in the morning?
I have several from different years.
You might think it is silly, but there are a lot of us that blanket tied horses at night in the high desert when they confined.
Get out of the office.
Have a great day.
To JKRob….
“ranks right up there with the silliness of deserts freezing at night in the summer”
Are you joking? I live in northern Nevada and camp all the time. I have personally witnessed 105 degree days, and woke up to all water jugs frozen solid, many many times. Dawn temperatures can be anywhere from 60 to 20 degrees any time during the summer regardless of how warm it is in the day. When the sun sets, you can physically feel the temperature drop rapidly especially in the winter. In the summer, you can physically feel the temperature rise very very quickly as soon as the sun crosses the horizon. If you do not believe me, you are welcome to come camping with us in mid august with nothing but a sheet and a tee shirt.
JKrob
At high lats we call it not desert, it is tundra. And it is concretely freezing at still night, when temps drop so low that some fog appears. The less there is humidity, the bigger day-night temp gap.
Anyway the cloud feedback is more about blocking incoming radiation, preventing warming, than radiating heat. That’s why high lat winters have warmed, but summer days not so much.
>>JK
>>That is your choice – but in your write-up, you seem to ignore the
>>extreme cold of tropical deep convection cloud tops
Wrong again, JK.
Tropical convective clouds HAVE to be warm, otherwise they cannot convect. It is a basic fact of physics – warm air rises. What you are seemingly forgetting it that this cloud-top temperature is relative.
The ISA atmosphere is -56ºc at 36,000′ and steady from there up to 60,000ft. A cloud top that rises above 36,000′ MUST be warmer than the ambient temperature at those levels (warmer than -56ºc), and sometimes considerably more so. And when that rising water vapour condenses and freezes in the upper atmosphere, it releases a great deal of latent heat.
And yes, some of it is still condensing and freezing even up at 50,000′, because not all the vapour has found a particle to condense on, and not all the supercooled droplets have frozen yet. Which is why pilots must steer clear of high-level convective clouds. Airframe iceing stops at -35ºc … except in convective clouds, where it can still freeze on the wing at much lower temperatures.
Thunderstorms only look cold on a satellite IR image, because you cannot see the temperature of the atmosphere next to the thunderstorm, which HAS to be colder than the thunderstorm itself. And all that latent heat energy from the thunderstorm is now transported high into the atmosphere, where there is no atmosphere to block the OLR from radiating away into space.
R
@Wayne Delbeke, Robert Wykoff, Hugh
I only know what I see…
If you notice, across a broad geographic area, there is only an average of 30F swing between Max & Min temperatures. If you have actual observation/forecasts info for your experiences, your free to submit them. Anecdotal climatology doesn’t count. Also, frontal passages/cold air advection doesn’t count either.
@ralfellis…
I’m trying to make this a simple as I can for you…which of my three (3) points do you disagree with and provide references (as I did) to back up your claims? I’ll save you the time – You *can’t* find references because what you are saying is wrong. Cold surfaces (cloud tops) radiate *LESS* LWIR than warm surfaces (low cloud tops/ earth surface) (point 1).
LOL – cloud top temperature is *absolute*! It is what it is. This is obvious from satellite IR imagery. All surfaces radiate LWIR at whatever temperature they are. Lower cloud tops are warmer than taller cloud tops. This is obvious from satellite IR imagery. Satellite IR imagery is ‘seeing’ the LWIR radiating into space.
The ISA atmosphere is irrelevant. Focus on the real-world dynamic atmosphere…which can be quite different in both moisture & temperature.
gee…what happens BELOW 36,000′??? when you make statements like that, it is obvious you don’t completely understand how the atmosphere works.
No one said it didn’t but the latent heat process only adds 3.1F/1000′ warming to the 5.38F/1000′ cooling process as the parcel rises. *HOWEVER* the latent heat process only occurs while the parcel is rising (internal to the cloud) & is not visible in LWIR because, as I said in point #3, Deep clouds BLOCK OLR, they don’t enhance it. When the cloud parcel reaches the Equilibrium Level (cloud top), it stops rising because it is at the same temperature as it’s surroundings & the latent heat process STOPS. There is no *enhancement*, there is no greater energy than at the surface, there is LESS (point #2).
You really need to study up on your meteorology…
“Satellite IR imagery is ‘seeing’ the LWIR radiating into space.”
Nope, it’s seeing colour temperature – localised LWIR diffusion at some altitude or other. Its observation does not imply a clear, unimpeded path to space.
JK
gee…what happens BELOW 36,000′??? when you make statements like that, it is obvious you don’t completely understand how the atmosphere works.
____________________________
I’m not sure what is worse, being wrong, or not being able to admit to being wrong.
A convective cloud MUST be warmer than its ambient surroundings AT ALL THE LEVELS IT PASSES THROUGH. Otherwise, it will cease to convect and grow. If it hits an inversion, however small, it will stop convecting. If the lapse rate of the atmosphere is less than the SALR, it will stop convecting. If the ambient air is warmer than the thermal, for whatever reason, it will stop convecting. Basic physics, JK.
And if you think you are so correct, then tell us all how a parcel of air will continue to rise, if it is colder than its surroundings. Go on, how does that happen? How do clouds form when they are ‘cold’? I presume you have read a page from Wiki and think you know something about meteorology, when it is apparent you cannot even grasp the basic principles.
R
JK
the air stops rising because it is at the same temperature as it’s surroundings & the latent heat process STOPS. There is no *enhancement*.
_______________________________
Nonsense. Much of the condensation returns to Earth as ice or cold water, while the heat that propelled it upwards is retained in the atmosphere at higher levels as the cloud dissipates. Only water is returned to Earth, not the rest of the air that rose up. And ALL the air that rose up through convection must, by the very laws of physics, have been warmer than the ambient air. So when that air finally spreads out, it can diffuse that energy int the surrounding atmosphere.
Besides, many thunderstorms only stop when they hit the tropopause inversion. So even if the cloud top stops at a point where the atmosphere is the same temperature, the thunderhead is still adding its warm temperature to the warm layer that forms the tropopause inversion. If you double the size of a warm layer, while maintaining its temperature, you are still adding energy to the upper atmosphere.
R
This is an explanation of the process for kids, so you might be able to understand this. Check out the sections on dry convection and moist convection.
Quote:
“Convection thus transports heat upward, making it warmer aloft than it would be in the absence of convection.”
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/atm_phys.html
JKrob
While I admire your long explanation of the heat transport in the hurricane, there is a piece missing. The conversion from latent heat of condensation to thermalized water droplets is correct. The expenditure on maintaining physical motion is also correct but it doesn’t stop there. The conversion to physical motion heats the ‘object’ by friction. In other words the walls are heated and that heat adds to the temperature of the system, either driving evaporation or delaying condensation.
The exit of energy from the system is from the top. Yes the top is cold, but that is because of the lapse rate and the face that when the water vapour radiates it cools. Similarly the droplets are powerful emitters of IR as well as being reflective in the visible wavelengths. The cold top of the hurricane is evidence of the mechanism of radiative cooling.
The drop in temperature of the sea surface is because of system cooling with the hurricane as the cooling system. Internal friction is not a consumer of energy it is only a part of the total enthalpy.
The storm cools by transporting energy from the surface to the top and the difference powers the vertical transports. All thunderstorms cool in this way. If they are ‘additionally energetic’ they rise higher until the radiative cooling matches the additionally energy available at that height.
Nothing up front; gets cold behind.
g
And OLR has nothing whatsoever to do with albedo. ” Albedo radiation ” if there is such a thing, is by definition, unaltered solar spectrum radiation from the sun, redirected to space by the earth. If those photons didn’t originate from the sun, they ain’t part of albedo.
Not going to make a joke about this monster.
It might be considered tasteless if it hits a poor, vulnerable country.
I hope someone will post a link showing high resolution and current SST in the wake of this storm as well as where it can be viewed regarding other storms in the Atlantic. I once had such a link but can no longer locate it.
Over Hyped, the speeds registered by the Station are at the top of the Storm, not at ground level and it has already dropped off a bit. NuSchool shows 145Kph, not Mph or knots.
They have over hyped every Typhoon in the last 2 years, whenever they get anywhere near something that can measure their ground speed they are not even close to Cat 5s.
Even if true, If I lived in the path of a storm with a clearly defined “eye”, I would batten down the hatches.
Just say’n.
Maybe say it like this: “Hatchidaunbatten!”
A C, left click on the spot you want to measure until a green circle and it’s attributes pop-up appears. Then click on the Kph in the box and it will change to other standards of measurement. apologies if you already knew that.
This seems to be a reasonable site showing satellite images of Soudelor.
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/category/himawari-8
I still haven’t found the SST in high resolution to view SST in the wake of this storm.
When I saw this reported in Oz, the headline screamed “largest tropical storm”. The sub headline said the same. In the first paragraph it was described as “the largest tropical storm this year”. As far as I know, there’s one of those every year!
Such is the state of climate porn from the catastrophiles.
The most asinine headline from that that article.”Typhoon so big you can see it from space!”. I live in Canberra, Australia and thought you must be kidding.
I am not in space, so I cannot see it. I can’t see it from earth either, But Sarah Palin can see it from her front door in Wasilla Alaska (suburb of Anchorage; sort of).
@george E smith. She could have simply answered. “Don’t you know how to use a computer?”.
George, is the Sarah Palin reference beased on what Sarah said or on what Tina Fey said?
Sarah said that you can see Russia from Alaska – there’s 3 miles separating a Russian island from an Alaskan island in the Bering Strait.
There are always multiple “largest tropical storm this year” as the first storm of each year is always the largest of that year so far, to be exceeded by later “largest of the year” storms.
SR
I hope the Aussie BOM has a look at this one to see what a real Cat 5 is like. They tend to exaggerate.
They are too busy trying to invent winter cyclones north of the Solomon Islands.
Some cyclone data homogenization might do the trick.
Hey, the latest earth.nullschool.net data shows another disintegration of the eye wall! Am I interpreting this correctly?
This is only a “super typhoon”.
Just wait until we see a “super doper typhoon”.
Wow man, that would be like Maui Wowee…
Well last night we had a Maui Zowie Round Table pizza for dinner.
But then Maui is actually on the cheezy side of the pizza, so not really visible from Australia, which is on the crusty side of the pizza.
g
They would have to name it Cheech!
Not a super typhoon anymore Down 60kts to 95kts an amazing weakening over warm water.
http://www.usno.navy.mil/NOOC/nmfc-ph/RSS/jtwc/warnings/wp1315prog.txt
Just hooked up a new computer:
Figured I’d burn it in by trying to run WUWT, YouTube, and a live feed from the racetrack all at the same time.
It (windows 10) got REALLY slow but never puked.
So, the experiment continues…………..
hope you have removed the 13 or more sneak spy n sell you down the river snoopware first???
When did they introduce the terms “Super” and “Severe”. I have lived in the typhoon zone for 40+ years and have experienced some quite nasty storms during the late 1960s and 1970s, but they were just typhoons in those days, but now we are supposed to accept that today the typhoons are so much more extreme (due to climate change) because they added an adjective?
Gib, the point is that the speed at which they add superlatives has increased! The rate of calling things even more ‘extreme’ is unprecedented!
The number of heated debates is also going up, no doubt fuelled by the missing heat which went walkabout somewhere near the last known position of Amelia Earhart.
The world of mysteries is deepening.
The southwestern US is experiencing a relatively normal monsoon (seasonal wind pattern) this year. This monsoon brings in moisture from the south which raises the dewpoint and also gives clouds & rain). Higher dewpoints reduce the daily temperature swings (as mentioned in JKRob’s post above). The majority of the year, the SW desert dewpoint is very low which allows large daily temperature swings. Please do not assume desert weather (or climate) is static throughout the year. Cold mornings during the summer months (May through September) is not unusual.