Hurricane is a storm system in the tropics that has low pressure center and circular swirls of clouds with strong winds and heavy precipitation. It goes by different names at different parts of the world. For example, in the west Pacific, it is called Typhoon; over the Indian Ocean, it is simply referred to as Cyclone. The generic name is Tropical Cyclone. Tropical cyclone causes extensive damages to the region it passes by. The main destructive damages come from heavy rain, strong wind, and large storm surges at landfall.

Hurricane research covers a wide range of areas. The ultimate goal is to better understand and predict their activity so that the damages to lives and properties can be minimized. My specific area is on the estimation of hurricane intensity from space using new NASA satellite constellation coupled with Prof. Kerry Emanuel's hurricane theory. The essence of this theory is: hurricane intensity (measured by, for example, maximum sustained wind speed), is related to the saturation moist static energy (MSE) difference from the eyewall to the environment. With new NASA satellite, measuring the saturation MSE becomes possible from space, thus giving fresh hope that Emanuel's hurricane theory can be turned into a satellite remote sensing technique. Some preliminary results toward this end has been published on IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters (see the cover page of the January 2008 issue on the left). You can also read NASA News Release on my study: NASA Data May Help Improve Estimates of a Hurricane's Punch

In addition to using CloudSat (which was reported in the NASA News Release), I am also collaborating with several other groups, including MISR team, GPS RO team and Goddard modeling group. The most fruitful result so far comes from using MISR and MODIS data (see the lower right figure below). There are still uncertainties with this new technique (as you can see from the deviation of the dots from the diagonal), which is the focus of our current research. But the roadmap is clear: we strive to use all available data sources to thoroughly test the Emanuel theory and to explore the possibility of turning it into an operational space-borne hurricane intensity technique.