The goal of the ongoing CyMISS (Tropical Cy clone intensity M easurements from the ISS ) project is to acquire image sequences of intense tropical cyclones (TCs), such as hurricanes and typhoons, to support the development of an improved remote sensing method to determine more accurately the strength of these destructive storms using stereoscopy. Funded by CASIS (Center for the Advancement of Science in Space) which manages the ISS US National Laboratory for NASA, this project has amassed a large collection of storm images during the last five years that we wish to share. One of the TCs observed in support of CyMISS by the crew of ISS Expedition 50 in 2017 was the powerful Pacific storm, Tropical Cyclone Debbie, off the coast of Australia.

August’s Image of the Month is a 3D synoptic view of Tropical Cyclone Debbie created using images from a sequence of 240 photographs (like the sample above) taken by the crew of the ISS during an overpass on March 27, 2017. When the four-minute photography session started at 07:10:00 GMT (5:10:00 PM AEST), Debbie was located at about 19.5° S, 150.1° E off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Tropical Cyclone Debbie had been intensifying steadily over the previous few days and had reached a strong Category 3 on the Australian tropical cyclone intensity scale (a strong Category 1 on the Saffir-Simpson scale used in the US) with sustained winds of about 148 kph (92 mph). Debbie would continue to move to the southwest and hit its peak strength a few hours later with sustained winds of 176 kph (109 mph) but then weakened as it made landfall on Queensland’s Whitsunday coast at about 02:40 GMT (12:40 PM AEST) on March 28.

In order to create the anaglyphic 3D image (left eye red, right eye blue), the individual photographs from the original image sequence were remapped to approximate an overhead view before various parts of the frames were stitched together into a synoptic 3D mosaic covering an area of approximately 1,700 by 1,100 kilometers. A high resolution version of this synoptic 3D mosaic with an image scale of 500 meters/pixel can be viewed by clicking on the image below. The clouds of Tropical Cyclone Debbie stand far above those not associated with the storm. It should also be noted that this southern hemisphere storm circulates clockwise – the opposite direction of storms in the northern hemisphere – due to the Coriolis effect.

The CyMISS team at Visidyne would like to thank the crew of the ISS as well as the staff at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and Johnson Space Center for their ongoing efforts. The original images are courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at NASA Johnson Space Center. The work presented here is supported in part under CASIS Grant UA-2019-013.

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See earlier articles on the CyMISS program here.