Welcome to the CloudSat Tropical Cyclone data set. This sites contains an inventory of all CloudSat tropical cyclone overpasses within 1000 km of a named storm over all of the basins.
The README file contains a complete description of all data fields for each overpass by CloudSat. The storms are listed by year and storm number for each basin.
The data starts in June 2006 and is up to date with overpasses through Dec 2019. There are currently 10,384 CloudSat overpasses within 1000 km of the storm center in the database. The most recent dataset contains a time stamp of anytime after 02/06/2020. Yearly tar files of all hdf files and NRL imagery are available in the year directory.
Visit the CloudSat Mission Home page for example TC overpasses.
Selected data fields from the following CloudSat products are found in each CloudSat TC overpass; 2B-GEOPROF, 2B-CWC-RO, 2B-CLDCLASS, MOD06-5KM-AUX, 2B-GEOPROF-LIDAR, ECMWF-AUX and 2C-PRECIP-COLUMN. Best track data is used to calculate storm latitude, longitude, maximum wind speed, pressure, shear and storm center SST.
Mitrescu, Cristian, Steven Miller, Jeffrey Hawkins, Tristan L'Ecuyer, Joseph Turk, Philip Partain, Graeme Stephens, 2008: Near-Real-Time Applications of CloudSat Data. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 47, 1982-1994. doi: 10.1175/2007JAMC1794.1
Luo Z., Stephens G. L., Emanuel K. A., Vane D. G., Tourville N. D., Haynes J.M., 2008: On the use of CloudSat and MODIS data for estimating hurricane intensity. IEEE Geosci Remote Sens Lett; 5(1): 13-6.
Durden, Stephen L., Simone Tanelli and Gregg Dobrowalski, 2009: CloudSat and A-Train Observations of Tropical Cyclones, The Open Atmospheric Science Journal, 3, 80-92.
Schubert, W. H. and B. D. McNoldy, 2010: Application of the Concepts of Rossby Length and Rossby Depth to Tropical Cyclone Dynamics. J. Adv. Model. Earth Syst., Vol. 2, Art. #7, 13 pp., doi:10.3894/JAMES.2010.2.7.
Matrosov, S. Y., 2011: CloudSat measurements of landfalling hurricanes Gustav and Ike (2008), J. Geophys. Res., 116, D01203, doi:10.1029/2010JD014506.
