Advancing the Dynamical Understanding of Tropical Storms and Atmospheric Rivers with Hyperspectral IR Atmospheric Motion Vectors and Radiance
Tropical storm systems, ranging from atmospheric easterly waves to hurricanes, and atmospheric rivers, are two of the most societally impactful extreme classes of weather systems that threaten huge swaths of highly populated coastlines.
Both tropical storm systems and atmospheric rivers are oceanic phenomena where data, especially winds through the depth of the troposphere, are notably inadequate for dynamical analysis. Cloud AMVs are biased toward low and high altitudes while the dynamically important mid-troposphere is poorly sampled. Cloud tracking is also not possible in the vast cloud-free areas that contribute to storm system evolution and dynamics.
Even with their phenomenological differences, further characterization and understanding of tropical systems and atmospheric rivers requires similar thermodynamic and wind observations that can be acquired with a global, small satellite constellation of miniaturized, high-performance, IR imaging radiometers, such as the MISTiC Winds® mission concept.
The benefit to tropical storm and atmospheric river science provided by a constellation obtaining hyperspectral IR AMVs and radiance is presented using theoretical retrievals from high resolution numerical simulations.
