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W4DPH > SAT 02.03.03 13:32l 62 Lines 2681 Bytes #999 (0) @ AMSAT
BID : ANS-061.04
Read: DB0FHN GUEST
Subj: NASA's Newest Seawinds Instrument Breezes Into Operation
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Sent: 030302/1117Z @:W4DPH.#TPA.FL.USA.NOAM #:48723 [CLW] FBB $:ANS-061.04
From: W4DPH@W4DPH.#TPA.FL.USA.NOAM
To : SAT@AMSAT
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 061.04 From AMSAT HQ
SILVER SPRING, MD. March 2, 2003
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-061.04
The Seawinds scatterometer, one of NASA's newest Earth-observing
instruments launched In December 2002 aboard the Japanese Advanced
Observing Satellite "Midori 2," successfully transmitted its first
radar pictures to Earth.
The released image, obtained from data collected on January 28 and 29,
depicts Earth's continents in green, polar glacial ice-covered regions
in blue-red and sea ice in gray.
Color and intensity changes over ice and land are related to ice
melting, variations in land surface roughness and vegetation cover.
Ocean surface wind speeds, measured during a 12-hour period on January
28, are shown by colors.
Blues correspond to low wind speeds and reds to wind speeds up to 15
meters per second (30 knots). Black arrows denote wind direction. White
gaps over the oceans represent unmeasured areas between SeaWinds
swaths (the instrument measures winds over about 90 percent of the
oceans each day).
SeaWinds transmits high-frequency microwave pulses to Earth's land
masses, ice cover and ocean surface and measures the strength of the
radar pulses that bounce back to the instrument.
It will complement and eventually replace an identical instrument
orbiting since June 1999 on NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat)
satellite. Its three- to five-year mission will augment a long-term
ocean surface wind data series that began in 1996 with launch of the
NASA Scatterometer on Japan's first Adeos spacecraft.
Seawinds will provide the world's most accurate, highest resolution and
broadest geographic coverage of ocean wind speed and Direction, sea
ice extent and properties of Earth's land surfaces. It takes millions
of radar measurements covering about 93 percent of Earth's surface
every day, operating under all weather conditions, day and night. Over
the oceans, SeaWinds senses ripples caused by the winds, from which
scientists can compute wind speed and direction. These ocean surface
winds drive Earth's oceans and control the exchange of heat, moisture
and gases between the atmosphere and the sea.
Climatologists, meteorologists and oceanographers will soon routinely
use data from SeaWinds on Midori 2 to understand and predict severe
weather patterns, climate change and global weather abnormalities like
El Nino.
The data are expected to improve global and regional weather forecasts,
ship routing and marine hazard avoidance, measurements of sea ice extent
and the tracking of icebergs, among other uses.
[ANS thanks Space Daily for the above information.]
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