SeaWinds Radar Clocks Hurricane Dora's Wind Speeds

The SeaWinds instrument onboard NASA's new QuikScat ocean-viewing satellite captured this image of Hurricane Dora in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean on August 10, as it was blowing at speeds of nearly 40 meters per second (90 miles per hour).

The image shows surface wind speed (colored background) and wind direction (arrows) in the vicinity of the hurricane, which was centered near 14.5 degrees north latitude and 117.8 degrees west longitude.

With its broad, 1,800-kilometer-wide (1,116-mile-wide) swath and nearly all-weather capabilities, the SeaWinds scatterometer is providing unprecedented, frequent surface wind speed and direction measurements over the global oceans. Coupled with other satellite measurements of cloud patterns, water vapor and rain, the data are contributing to scientists' ability to predict the intensity, location and movements of hurricanes and other severe marine weather patterns.

More information about the SeaWinds radar instrument is available at http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/

The orbiting SeaWinds radar instrument is managed for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC, by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which also built the SeaWinds radar instrument and is providing ground science processing systems. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, managed development of the satellite, designed and built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, CO. NOAA has contributed support to ground systems processing and related activities.

NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is a long-term research and technology program designed to examine Earth's land, oceans, atmosphere, ice and life as a total integrated system. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.