As Hurricane Debby ramps up a potentially historic rain dump in the Southeast, this new NASA vid describes how satellite observations of precipitation have been conducted and improved in recent decades.
As Hurricane Debby ramps up a potentially historic rain dump in the Southeast, this new NASA vid describes how satellite observations of precipitation have been conducted and improved in recent decades.
Long read, worth it:
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/08/climate-crisis-atlantic-amoc-wired-science-tipping-point/
This reminded me of the “oh shit” moment when they realized that the satellite topographic measurements that were used to predict vulnerability to sea level rise overestimated the elevation of a lot of remote land because tree cover was sometimes misinterpreted as land height. The well-mapped land of North America and Europe were used as verification with what the satellite algorithm produced highlighted the mismeasurement provided by the satellite.
I don’t know how it was resolved but I’d expect they had local ground-level measurements to cross-check what the space-read data produced.
As with any new measurement technology, it is calibrated by its overlap with existing reliable measurements (e.g., using visible microscope images to sanity-check the first electron microscope images, established anatomical knowlege to verify early CT technology, weather balloon direct measurements to cross-check satellite results).