NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory

Cyclone Catarina was a Category 1 cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale that formed in the South Atlantic and hit near the town of Torres in the southern part of Brazil on March 28, 2004. A hurricane had never formed in the Southern Atlantic according to records, so this came as quite a shock. The 2004 Atlantic hurricane season ended with an above-normal 15 named storms.

Fast forward to today, when the second recorded tropical cyclone has been found in the South Atlantic. The tropical storm, called 90Q, has maximum sustained winds of 40 knots. Fortunately we have satellites that can help us see and prepare for these storms. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM satellite measured the rainfall in the storm. From this measurement, a 3-D computer simulation was run. From the NOAA website:

This system in the South Atlantic off the coast of Brazil has been classified as a tropical cyclone by the NOAA HPC. This comes 6 years after Cyclone Catarina, in March 2004, the first hurricane-intensity tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Atlantic Ocean.

Fortunately, the tropical storm appears to be headed away from Brazil. Now the only question is, what does this mean for the 2010 North Atlantic Season?

via NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory.

This story written by Paul Adams

Paul Adams leads an award-winning, diverse contractor team that runs a federal high performance computing facility where he has worked for 17 years. He loves getting his hands on the latest visualization and computer hardware, astronomy, aerospace engineering, working with the poor, and ringing cowbells.