[ Outtake ]
[ Reporter ] NASA is releasing a new global portrait of rain and snow,
and here to show us this portrait and tell us a little more about it is
Dr. Gail Skofronick-Jackson from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Thanks for joining us.
[ Dr. Skofronick-Jackson ] Thank you.
Typically what you might see are localized rain maps from your ground based radars,
or maybe the white cloud tops from satellites.
With the new joint NASA/Japan Global Precipitation Measurement mission, or GPM,
we're actually able to provide uniform precipitation estimates
using a constellation of about a dozen satellites.
With this data, which is important for science and society,
we are able to see rain and snow globally
every 30 minutes at the scale of a small suburb.
[ Reporter ] Can you take us on a tour and show us some of the surprising things you've seen?
[ Dr. Skofronick-Jackson ] So there's been many impressive features we've seen with this data set.
But first, I want to show you some data from March 24th, 25th, and 26th, 2015.
There's some very severe thunderstorms in the US.
In fact, in Moore, Oklahoma they had a tornado.
So that's some really interesting data.
We also have, looking at the Amazon, you can see these very small, intense features
that kind of pop up and then disappear,
as well as these large features that persist a little bit longer.
These systems provide rain that drain into the Amazon River,
the largest river in the world.
Finally, moving south, you can see these huge systems spiraling
in the southern ocean, an area of the world where we just don't have good ground data,
and we need to be able to measure this data from space to see it.
[ Reporter ] I understand this is the first satellite designed specifically to measure falling snow.
Tell us a little bit about that and why that's important.
[ Dr. Skofronick-Jackson ] Right, so GPM, the core observatory, was specifically designed
to measure falling snow, but it was also designed to see three dimensionally
within the clouds. So we look at Hurricane Arthur from July 2014,
you can see in the greens to reds, the liquid precipitation near the ocean surface,
But high up in the cloud, you can see in blues to purple, frozen precipitation.
All hurricanes have ice in the tops of their clouds, but if it happens to be cold enough
at the Earth's surface, we can see falling snow with this satellite.
In this particular animation, you can see, from February 2015,
you can see the rain-snow transition line.
And so it's really important to measure all these different types of precipitation
because they contribute to Earth's water resources.
[ Reporter ] How will forecasters and emergency managers use these maps?
[ Dr. Skofronick-Jackson ] Yeah, water is essential for all life on Earth,
so knowing where, when, and how much it rains or snows is very important
to help us predict where floods might occur, where droughts might occur,
landslides, or where the hurricanes might be impacting our coastlines.
So GPM provides this data in near real time, so that emergency responders
can get early access to it and to be able to predict or
make decisions about disaster warnings.
And finally, with the GPM data, one of the best uses of it to be able to improve
our weather forecasts and our climate change models
for our everyday lives and our long term future.
[ Reporter ] I understand there was a lot of interesting activity
that happened over the oceans just last week.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
[ Dr. Skofronick-Jackson ] So, actually, last week there was Typhoon Maysak
which we were able to see, we don't have visualizations of it yet
because it's so new, but we're able to capture events like that in three dimensions
to provide this additional information.
[ Reporter ] And where can we learn more about this mission?
[ Dr. Skofronick-Jackson ] Oh, it's been such an exciting year for NASA
We've had 5 Earth science satellites measuring everything from soil moisture
to the carbon in the atmosphere. And you can get more information at
NASA.gov/earthrightnow
[Reporter] Ok, thanks so much for joining us.