(Press-News.org) NASA satellites provide infrared images to forecasters that show temperature, and today's imagery of powerful Hurricane Igor showed the storm's perfect form and the warm ocean waters around it that are keeping it fueled. NASA's infrared data also revealed a huge difference of 170 degrees between the cold cloud tops in Hurricane Igor and the warm sea surface temperatures powering it below.
When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Igor on Sept. 14 at 14:47 UTC (10:47 a.m. EDT) the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured icy cold cloud top temperatures in the strong thunderstorms that surround Igor's well-defined eye. Those cloud top temperatures were as cold or colder than -90F, indicating they were near the top of the troposphere, and very strong.
The infrared imagery also showed the warmer, open 20 nautical-mile wide eye (because it was not cloud-filled). In addition, AIRS got a reading on the sea surface temperatures around Igor, which were all warmer than the 80F threshold needed to maintain a tropical cyclone, so Igor has a good energy source for the next day or two. So, the difference between Igor's cold cloud top temperatures and the warm ocean surface waters that are powering it are greater than 170 degrees Fahrenheit!
The AIRS instrument is managed out of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. and NASA's Ed Olsen creates those stunning images.
At 11 a.m. EDT today, Sept. 14, Hurricane Igor was still a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale with maximum sustained winds near 135 mph. It was located far from land, about 710 miles east of the Northern Leeward Islands, near 18.3 North and 52.3 West. It was moving west-northwest near 7 mph, and is forecast by NOAA's National Hurricane Center to turn toward the northwest on Wednesday. Igor's minimum central pressure is 945 millibars.
Although Igor is over 700 miles from the Northern Leeward Islands, large ocean swells will reach them today creating dangerous conditions at beaches. Large swells will reach Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands later today and tomorrow. These dangerous surf conditions also create rip currents along the beaches.
INFORMATION:
Stunning NASA infrared imagery of Hurricane Igor reveals a 170 degree temperature difference
2010-09-15
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Do children understand irony?
2010-09-15
New research findings from the Université de Montréal reveals that children as young as four are able to understand and use irony. This study, published recently in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, may impact the way parents communicate with their family.
"Previous studies concluded that irony wasn't understood before the age of eight or ten," says Stephanie Alexander, a postdoctoral student at the Université de Montréal's Department of Social and Preventive Medicine and senior author of the study. "However, these studies were mostly done in a laboratory ...
ORNL scientists reveal battery behavior at the nanoscale
2010-09-15
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Sept. 14, 2010 -- As industries and consumers increasingly seek improved battery power sources, cutting-edge microscopy performed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is providing an unprecedented perspective on how lithium-ion batteries function.
A research team led by ORNL's Nina Balke, Stephen Jesse and Sergei Kalinin has developed a new type of scanning probe microscopy called electrochemical strain microscopy (ESM) to examine the movement of lithium ions through a battery's cathode material. The research, "Nanoscale mapping ...
Legal analysis: The health insurance mandate is constitutional
2010-09-15
(Garrison, NY) The most politically charged feature of the health reform law is the mandate that legal residents have health insurance. Within weeks of the law's passage, twenty states had filed lawsuits charging that the mandate is unconstitutional because it gives the federal government more power than it actually has. The state lawsuits are widely expected to reach the Supreme Court next year. Legal scholar Lawrence O. Gostin writes that the health insurance mandate rests on firm legal ground.
Under the mandate, which goes into effect in 2014, the federal government ...
Study identifies students at risk for difficulties in medical school
2010-09-15
Students who enter medical school with high debt levels, low scores on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) or who are non-white are more likely to face difficulties that may prevent graduation or hinder acceptance into a residency program if they do graduate, according to a nationwide study of students enrolled in MD programs.
The research, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is reported Sept. 15 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study of more than 84,000 students who entered U.S. medical schools from 1994-1999 showed ...
Report shows federal poverty guidelines leave state's seniors destitute
2010-09-15
Data and research on what it really takes for seniors to make ends meet in each of California's 58 counties will be released today at the state Capitol in Sacramento.
The release is the latest update of the Elder Economic Security Standard Index (Elder Index), a tool that measures the actual costs of basic necessities for older adults. The Elder Index is quickly replacing federal poverty level (FPL) guidelines as a new standard for evaluating and meeting the needs of seniors across California.
"This year, the federal government officially acknowledged it's time ...
Blood test accurately predicts death from prostate cancer up to 25 years in advance
2010-09-15
NEW YORK, September 14, 2010 – A blood test at the age of 60 can accurately predict the risk that a man will die from prostate cancer within the next 25 years, according to researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in New York, and Lund University, in Sweden. The findings, published today online in the British Medical Journal, could have important implications for determining which men should be screened after the age of 60 and which may not benefit substantially from continued prostate cancer screening.
The study analyzed blood samples from 1,167 men born ...
Adapting to darkness: How behavioral and genetic changes helped cavefish survive extreme environment
2010-09-15
VIDEO:
A cavefish (left) and surface fish (right) swimming in assay chambers in the presence of a 50 Hz vibrating rod. When the rod is vibrated, the cavefish, but not surface...
Click here for more information.
University of Maryland biologists have identified how changes in both behavior and genetics led to the evolution of the Mexican blind cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus) from its sighted, surface-dwelling ancestor. In research published in the August 12, 2010 online edition ...
Informatics = essential MD competency
2010-09-15
In an article published in the Sept. 15 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, (JAMA), author Edward H. Shortliffe, MD, PhD, points out that although information underlies all clinical work, and despite the growing role that information management and access play in healthcare delivery and clinical support, there is a dearth of informatics competency being developed in America's future corps of physicians. Formalized education in the application of informatics and the use and methodologies of health information technology and exchange, Dr. Shortliffe ...
For 4-year-olds, interactions with teacher key to gains
2010-09-15
Pre-kindergartners who spend much of their classroom day engaged in so-called free-choice play with little input from teachers make smaller gains in early language and math skills than children who receive input from teachers in a range of different activity settings. Low-income children benefit particularly when a higher proportion of their time is spent in individual instruction settings.
Those are the findings of a new study that appears in the September/October 2010 issue of Child Development.
"If early childhood education is to level the playing field by stimulating ...
Children under 4 and children with autism don't yawn contagiously
2010-09-15
If someone near you yawns, do you yawn, too? About half of adults yawn after someone else does in a phenomenon called contagious yawning. Now a new study has found that most children aren't susceptible to contagious yawning until they're about 4 years old—and that children with autism are less likely to yawn contagiously than others.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Connecticut, appears in the September/October 2010 issue of the journal Child Development.
To determine the extent to which children at various stages of social development are likely ...