PIA22752: NASA's AIRS captures Hurricane Michael's Landfall
 Target Name:  Earth
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Aqua
 Spacecraft:  Aqua
 Instrument:  AIRS
 Product Size:  900 x 695 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  JPL
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA22752.tif (810.2 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA22752.jpg (132.6 kB)

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Original Caption Released with Image:

This image from NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) shows the temperature of clouds or the surface in and around Hurricane Michael as the storm made landfall in the Florida panhandle on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2018.

The large purple area indicates very cold clouds carried high into the atmosphere by deep thunderstorms. These storm clouds are associated with heavy rainfall. The warmer eye of the hurricane, located at the center of the cold clouds, is shown in green. The red areas are mostly cloud-free areas, with the clear air caused by air motion outward from the cold clouds near the storm center then downward in the surrounding areas.

Michael made landfall as a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (250 kph).

AIRS, in conjunction with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit, AMSU, senses emitted infrared and microwave radiation from Earth to provide a three-dimensional look at Earth's weather and climate. Working in tandem, the two instruments make simultaneous observations down to Earth's surface, even in the presence of heavy clouds. With more than 2,000 channels sensing different regions of the atmosphere, the system creates a global, three-dimensional map of atmospheric temperature and humidity, cloud amounts and heights, greenhouse gas concentrations, and many other atmospheric phenomena. Launched into Earth orbit in 2002, the AIRS and AMSU instruments fly onboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft and are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, under contract to NASA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about AIRS can be found at https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Addition Date:
2018-10-10