The intent of this page is for users to find and download data chopped around hurricane tracks and other events.

This site offers three views of storm tracks:

* for the entire globe
* for one of the predefined basins
* per storm

The per-storm web page then displays and allows downloads of instrument data, namely:

* Wind: from SeaWinds on QuikSCAT
* Sea Surface Temperature: from the GHRSST project
* Ocean Altimetry: from Jason (soon)

Storm Track Pages

The global page http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/hurricanes shows a global, clickable image showing the extent of the predefined basins, a list of recent storms, and links to the XML datacasting feeds, one per instrument.

The basin page, e.g. 2007 North Atlantic, shows all the storms in a basin for either a year or a specific month.

The storm page, e.g. 2008 Hurricane Ike, is the page for getting instrument data. The top frame shows the storm's track overlaid with dots (, , ) that indicate when an instrument measured a storm (a.k.a. "flyby"). Buttons control which instruments' dots to display as well as the times of measurement. Clicking on a dot sets the lower frame to that instrument's data. Simply checking boxes in the lower frame and clicking "Download" downloads multiple data files and images.

All three include a selector to navigate directly to any other page, i.e. to the globe or a specific storm or basin.

Instrument Data

The lower frame of the storm page shows an instrument's data for a given storm, while the upper frame controls switching instruments and downloading data. Each table below explains the columns of the lower frame for the different instruments. "NRT" means near-real-time. Conversely, any data set without it is scientific, i.e. fully-processed.

	These data come from the SeaWinds instrument on the QuikSCAT satellite. For the table in the storm page, the icons in this column are the first gifs found for that flyby (typically from the next product)
Hi-Res	NRT Ultra high resolution images: 2.5km wind speeds (derived from the next product) overlaid with 12.5km wind vectors (from the 12.5km MGDR product below)
sigma0 R	NRT Ultra high-res sigma0 winds & directions, ambiguities removed (derived from the next product)
sigma0 W	NRT Ultra high-res sigma0 winds & directions (derived from the next product)
sigma0 M	NRT Sigma0s mapped (derived from the next product)
sigma0 L	NRT Sigma0s localized (derived from the next product)
sigma0 P	NRT Sigma0s fore h polarization, aft h pol, fore v pol, aft v pol (derived from the next product)
sigma0 F	NRT Full rev of sigma0s
MGDR12	NRT 12.5 km MGDR (merged geophysical data record) winds
MGDR25	NRT 25 km MGDR (merged geophysical data record) winds
sci L1B	Level 1B data, i.e. time-ordered, earth-located sigma0s (backscattered radar)
sci L2B	Level 2B data and images, i.e. ocean wind vectors in 25km swath grid

	These three data sets come from the GHRSST project (GODAE High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature). All are level 4 sea surface temperatures, interpolated, daily, global. The images for the coarser data sets below have been magnified to match OSTIA, but the data have not been regridded.
GHRSST-UKMO OSTIA	The U.K. Met Office has produced these 5km data since 2006
GHRSST-NCDC AVHRR	The National Climatic Data Center has produced these 25km data based on the AVHRR instruments since before 1999
GHRSST-NCDC AMSAVH	The National Climatic Data Center has produced these 25km data based on the AVHRR instruments and AMSR-E since 2002.

	These data come from the SeaWinds instrument on the ADEOS-II satellite. For the table in the storm page, the icons in this column are the first gifs found for that flyby (typically from the next product)
sci L1B	Level 1B data, i.e. time-ordered, earth-located sigma0s (backscattered radar)
sci L2B	Level 2B data and images, i.e. ocean wind vectors in 25km swath grid

Other Information

Datacasting

For each active instrument, the global web page has an button to subscribe to the associated feed.

Briefly, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an XML-based format for sharing and distributing Web content, such as hurricane data. Use an RSS reader, such as recent web browsers, to view these data feeds. Also, some web pages, e.g. My Yahoo!, allow you to add feeds onto them.

http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov has a fuller explanation of datacasting, as well as other datasets.

Other Hurricane Web Sites

* http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/hurricane: TRMM, MODIS, AIRS data
* http://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/TYP_DB/index_e.shtml: TRMM, AQUA data
* http://www.stormpulse.com: nice images
* http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic2: nice interface from the University of Wisconsin-Madison