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SAR winds over Tropical Storm Mirinae

By Scott Lindstrom •

Himawari-8 “Red visible” (0.64 µm) on 2010 UTC on 8 August 2021, data courtesy JMA (Click to enlarge)

Tropical Storm Mirinae, shown above, to the east of Japan (click here to see the same image with latitude/longitude lines), was overflown on 8 August by Radar Constellation Mission Satellite one (RCM-1) at 2013 UTC. The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery (from this site) is shown below, with both polarities. The two polarities help mitigate wind speed errors that might arise from ice. A peak wind of nearly 60 knots is indicated.

RCM1 Synthetic Aperture Radar winds, 2013 UTC on 8 August 2021, HH Polarization at 5.4 GHz (click to enlarge)
RCM1 Synthetic Aperture Radar winds, 2013 UTC on 8 August 2021, HV Polarization at 5.4 GHz (click to enlarge)

The storm profile winds from the Mirinae at this time are shown below (courtesy Christopher Jackson, GST/NOAA). Such plots are useful for determining max wind radii.

Mirinae SAR winds as a function of distance from the center, 2013 UTC o 8 August 2021 (Click to enlarge)

Categories: Himawari-8, Microwave, SAR, Satellite winds, Tropical cyclones