Hurricane Insights from NOAA Satellites

The job of forecasting is with NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS), but the Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR), a program office within the National Satellite and Information Service (NESDIS), develops products from these sensors and ensures data quality and consistency. These products provide critical, timely information to forecasters at NWS and the National Hurricane Center (NHC) enabling up-to-the-minute forecast and advisory adjustments that can save lives and protect homes and businesses.

With NOAA satellites continuously observing the globe for hurricanes or other significant events in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, they provide more frequent data collection. For example, the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) onboard the GOES-R Series of geostationary satellites, provides visible and infrared views of our hemisphere.This vantage point provides critical observations for 24/7 hurricane monitoring, accurate warnings for at-risk communities, and emergency response and evacuation planning for decision makers.

NOAA Satellites Observing What Forecasters Can (and Can’t) See

NOAA satellites are equipped with advanced sensors that measure radiant energy across the electromagnetic spectrum. Most of this energy is invisible to the human eye, but satellite instruments can detect it to monitor weather systems like hurricanes. 

These satellites measure visible light, infrared and microwave wavelengths, which each offer unique insights. 

• Visible Light wavelengths are the only part of the spectrum visible to the human eye, appearing as the colors of the rainbow. GOES satellites capture daytime imagery of hurricanes, revealing swirling cloud bands, lightning flashes and eye formation. This information helps forecasters learn about the storm’s structure, including cloud patterns, cloud top features and large-scale motion. The images also help them identify the storm’s center and track its development over time. 

• Infrared sensors measure the temperatures of cloud tops and their intensity, during both the day and night. Color-enhanced infrared imagery shows the coldest (and thus highest) cloud tops, which are often associated with the most intense thunderstorms. This data helps forecasters estimate a hurricane’s intensity, analyze upper-level wind patterns and predict landfall timing.

• Microwave sensors can ”see” hidden features of a hurricane such as rainbands and parts of the eyewall as it develops by penetrating thick cloud coverage. These observations are particularly useful for analyzing rainfall distribution, sea surface temperatures, sea surface wind speed and direction and changes in a storm’s structure, which are important for determining sudden changes in a hurricane's strength. 

Microwave instruments on international partner satellites can sense atmospheric and ocean conditions beneath cloud cover. 

• Scatterometers: These high frequency microwave radar instruments can measure the speed and direction of winds on the surface of the ocean by detecting how microwave signals bounce off the water. EUMETSAT’s Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) on polar-orbiting meteorological satellites and the India Space Research Organization’s Oceansat-3 scatterometer (OSCAT) have these instruments. 

• Microwave altimeters: This type of radar system, carried on satellites like NOAA’s partner missions Jason-3 and Sentinel-6, determines sea surface height and wave conditions. These instruments also provide information about wind speeds at the ocean’s surface. From measurements of the surface, scientists can estimate the amount of heat stored in the ocean, the energy that fuels hurricanes.
• Microwave radiometers: This type of system receives natural emitted microwave signals from the environment. By using several different microwave channels it can retrieve atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles layer by layer globally.This sensor helps distinguish many different parameters such as ocean surface wind speeds, sea surface temperature, rain rate, total precipitable water and cloud liquid water. 

Together these tools deliver comprehensive insights into the ocean and atmosphere environment.

A Real-World Example: Hurricane Helene

A recent example of STAR’s impact was during Hurricane Helene.The storm formed near the Yucatan Peninsula as a tropical storm on September 24, and rapidly intensified into a Category 4 storm by the next day before making landfall in northern Florida. Helene brought extreme rainfall, damaging winds, flooding and storm surge to the southeast U.S., which caused considerable damage and casualties. 

During Helene, STAR’s microwave data revealed inner storm structures that visible and infrared sensors could not detect.This enabled forecasters to issue rapid, accurate updates that resulted in improved accuracy and minimizing both casualties and financial losses across the region.