NASA's Aqua Satellite spots rare Southern Atlantic sub-tropical storm

Sub-tropical Storm Arani forms

2011-03-16

(Press-News.org) NASA's Aqua satellite spotted some strong convection in a recently formed low pressure area that strengthened into Sub-Tropical Storm Arani in the South Atlantic. Arani formed near the coast of Brazil and is now moving away from it. Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic are a rare occurrence and since 2004 there have only been three of them, Arani being the third.

On March 14, 2011 at 1553 UTC (11:53 a.m. EST) the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Sub-Tropical Storm Arani moving away from the Brazilian coast. Most of the convection and thunderstorms were limited to the eastern half of the storm at the time of the image. The strong areas of convection (rapidly rising air that condenses and forms the thunderstorms that power a tropical cyclone) appeared on the imagery as a sideways boomerang, and were off-shore, paralleling the coast.

AIRS measured the temperatures in those strong areas of convection and found they were as cold as or colder than -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius) indicating some strong thunderstorms with heavy rainfall. That heavy rainfall was occurring off-shore. NASA's AIRS imagery is created at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

On March 15 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EST), the Brazilian Navy issued a special marine warning for the Brazilian coast. The warning stated that Sub-Tropical Storm Arani was located near 24.0 South latitude and 37 West longitude. Arani had a minimum central pressure of 998 millibars and was moving east-southeast near 10 to 15 knot winds.

Tropical cyclones in the Southern Atlantic Ocean are rare. In 2010 System 90Q formed in the same region where Sub-Tropical Storm Arani formed this year. For more information on System 90Q, visit NASA's Hurricane page archives at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2010/h2010_90Q.html.

Dr. Jack Beven of the National Hurricane Center, Miami, Fla. said that Sub-Tropical Storm Arani is not currently as well developed as Tropical Storm Catarina was in the Southern Atlantic in 2004 or System 90Q last year.

The Brazilian Navy has marine forecasting responsibility for that part of the Atlantic designated the system a subtropical cyclone. For updates from the Brazilian Navy on Sub-Tropical Storm Arani, visit: https://www.mar.mil.br/dhn/chm/meteo/indexing.htm. NASA's Hurricane page is managed out of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Sub-Tropical Storm Arani is forecast to continue moving away from the Brazilian coast over the next couple of days.

INFORMATION:

[Attachments] See images for this press release:

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Large Hadron Collider could be world's first time machine

2011-03-16

If the latest theory of Tom Weiler and Chui Man Ho is right, the Large Hadron Collider – the world's largest atom smasher that started regular operation last year – could be the first machine capable causing matter to travel backwards in time. "Our theory is a long shot," admitted Weiler, who is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University, "but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints." One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons ...

Toygaroo.com Launches Nation's Largest 'Online Toy Rental Service'

2011-03-16

Toygaroo.com, an innovative new toy rental company, has launched its online service, which will help families save money and go green by not having to throw out their old toys. Toygaroo, which has a similar format to Netflix, allows families to rent toys for their children and provide a steady rotation of high-quality toys that can grow along with them. In addition, Toygaroo will be featured on the March 25 season premiere of ABC's "Shark Tank," a show that allows entrepreneurs to pitch their business ideas to successful investors. "Any family with children understands ...

Insulin-releasing switch discovered

2011-03-16

Johns Hopkins researchers believe they have uncovered the molecular switch for the secretion of insulin — the hormone that regulates blood sugar — providing for the first time an explanation of this process. In a report published online March 1 in Cell Metabolism, the researchers say the work solves a longtime mystery and may lead to better treatments for type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease. "Before our discovery, the mechanism behind how exactly the insulin-producing beta cells in the islet of Langerhans of the pancreas fail in type 2 diabetes was incompletely ...

Poorly presented risk statistics could misinform health decisions

2011-03-16

Choosing the appropriate way to present risk statistics is key to helping people make well-informed decisions. A new Cochrane Systematic Review found that health professionals and consumers may change their perceptions when the same risks and risk reductions are presented using alternative statistical formats. Risk statistics can be used persuasively to present health interventions in different lights. The different ways of expressing risk can prove confusing and there has been much debate about how to improve the communication of health statistics. For example, you ...

PURE Life Experiences Leads a Radical Shift in the Travel Industry: 85% of Travel Operators Agree That "Experiences" Are 7 Times More Important Than "Price" in the Differentiation of Their Offering

2011-03-16

Experts in the travel industry are progressively turning towards Experiential Travel and Transformational Travel to stand out in a much too undifferentiated, fusional and standardised world. A recent survey created by PURE confirms this trend: travel experts provided insightful information on the new challenges that operators in the industry will soon be facing and on how it is going to be all about the "experience". For the complete report, visit http://ww.purelifeexperiences.com/pureinsights.pdf. According to the survey, 96.5% of Experiential suppliers agree that authentic ...

Newer antimalarials more effective than quinine against severe malaria

2011-03-16

Quinine should no longer be the drug of choice for treating severe malaria, according to an updated systematic review by Cochrane researchers. It is now evident that the antimalarial drug artesunate, which is derived from herbs used in Chinese medicine, is more effective at preventing death in patients with severe malaria. Severe malaria occurs when the disease affects the function of vital organs. It is associated with rarer cerebral malaria, which affects the brain and can lead to long-term disability. More than a million people die each year from severe malaria, the ...

Tests on century-old equipment show how far X-rays have come

2011-03-16

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Researchers recently tested first-generation x-ray equipment from 1896 and found that it produced radiation doses and exposure times that were vastly higher than those of today's systems, according a study published online and in the May print edition of Radiology. "To my knowledge, nobody had ever done systematic measurements on this equipment, since by the time one had the tools, these systems had been replaced by more sophisticated ones," said the study's lead author, Gerrit J. Kemerink, Ph.D., from Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. Wilhelm ...

Study: Multi-tasking on the street not a good idea for older people

2011-03-16

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Older adults may put themselves at risk by talking on cell phones while crossing the street, researchers report in a new study. The researchers found that adults aged 59 to 81 took significantly longer than college students to cross a simulated street while talking on a mobile phone, and their heightened cautiousness in initiating crossing did nothing to improve their safety. Older adults on cell phones also were more likely to fail to cross in the time allotted for the task. The findings, from researchers at the University of Illinois, appear in the ...

New articles examine safety of airport security scanners

2011-03-16

OAK BROOK, Ill. – The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has begun to use whole-body imaging scanners as a primary screening measure on travelers passing through airport security checkpoints. One type of scanner employs millimeter wave technology, which delivers no ionizing radiation. However, the second type of scanner currently deployed at airports uses backscatter X-rays that expose the individual being screened to very low levels of ionizing radiation. In the April issue of Radiology, two articles address the question of what potential long-term public health ...

The drama of starbirth

2011-03-16

The star-forming region NGC 6729 is part of one of the closest stellar nurseries to the Earth and hence one of the best studied. This new image from ESO's Very Large Telescope gives a close-up view of a section of this strange and fascinating region (a wide-field view is available here: eso1027). The data were selected from the ESO archive by Sergey Stepanenko as part of the Hidden Treasures competition [1]. Sergey's picture of NGC 6729 was ranked third in the competition. Stars form deep within molecular clouds and the earliest stages of their development cannot be seen ...

NASA's Aqua Satellite spots rare Southern Atlantic sub-tropical storm

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: