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.
On Monday, August 28th, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Scientific Development Squadron (VXS-1) airdropped 18 buoys associated with the Task 3A teams of the NOPP Hurricane Coastal Impacts project in the path of Hurricane Idalia.
At IGARSS 2023 in Pasadena, CA, the PIs of the two Task 2 remote sensing groups of the University of Miami and the University of Massachusetts presented results of their Hurricane Ian studies.
The Deltares team forecasts 2023 hurricane activity for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts, and looks back at predictions for Hurricane Ian.
