The European satellites Sentinel-1A and -1B acquire synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of coastal regions of the U.S. on a regular basis, and they can be programmed to acquire additional images at times of hurricanes and similar events of interest. The European Space Agency makes all Sentinel-1 imagery available to interested users in near real time, free of charge. Together with the radar intensity images, derived wind fields are provided.
To give the project partners an idea of the coverage and quality of these products, we downloaded three images of Hurricane Michael (2018) over the Gulf of Mexico, acquired 2018-10-08 23:50 UTC, 2018-10-09 23:43 UTC, and 2018-10-10 11:49 UTC, and we converted the radar intensity images and wind fields to KMZ files for viewing in Google Earth. The animated GIF on this web page shows these products and zooms into the October 10 wind field to resolve the white wind direction arrows.
Deltares presented their results on coastal flooding and damages due to hurricanes Ian (2022), Idalia (2023), Beryl (2024) and Francine (2024) at ICCE2024 and in Storymap.
A tool for production of rapid-repeat high-resolution coastal vegetation maps has been developed.
The NHCI project coordinated the airdrop of 16 surface wave buoys and subsurface water level sensors in the path of Hurricane Francine.
