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.
The National Oceanographic Partnership Program’s (NOPP) Predicting Hurricane Coastal Impacts Project (NHCI) was mentioned in a White House press release.
From November 29 to December 1st, all ten NHCI teams gathered at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, for the 2022 all-hands meeting.
Following the rapid-response air deployment of an array of buoys in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of Hurricane Ian, team members closely monitored the data collected by the devices.
