These images from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer portray
an occluded extratropical cyclone situated in the Southern Ocean,
about 650 kilometers south of the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia.
Parts of the Yorke Peninsula and a portion of the Murray-Darling
river basin are visible between the clouds near the top of the
left-hand image, a true-color view from MISR's nadir
(vertical-viewing) camera. Retrieved cloud-tracked wind velocities
are indicated by the superimposed arrows. The image on the right
displays cloud-top heights. Areas where cloud heights could not
be retrieved are shown in black. Both the wind vectors
and the cloud heights were derived using data from multiple
MISR cameras within automated computer processing algorithms. The
stereoscopic algorithms used to generate these results are still
being refined, and future versions of these products may show
modest changes.
Extratropical cyclones are the dominant weather system at
midlatitudes, and the term is used generically for regional
low-pressure systems in the mid- to high-latitudes. In the
southern hemisphere, cyclonic rotation is clockwise. These storms
obtain their energy from temperature differences between air masses
on either side of warm and cold fronts, and their characteristic
pattern is of warm and cold fronts radiating out from a migrating
low pressure center which forms, deepens, and dissipates as the
fronts fold and collapse on each other. The center of this cyclone
has started to decay, with the band of cloud to the south most
likely representing the main front that was originally connected
with the cyclonic circulation.
These views were acquired on October 11, 2001 during Terra orbit
9650, and represent an area of about 380 kilometers x 1900
kilometers.
Image credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team.
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