Nimbus cloud

Low clouds ground level to 2,000 m (also called nimbus clouds). 

A thunderstorm is a brief, local storm produced by the rapid upward movement of warm, moist air within a cumulo-nimbus cloud. Thunderstorms always produce lightning and thunder, accompanied by strong wind gusts and heavy rain or hail. 

A severe storm with swirling winds that may reach speeds of hundreds of km per hour is called a tornado. Such a storm is also referred to as a twister . The sky is covered by large cumulo-nimbus clouds and violent thunderstorms a funnel-shaped swirling cloud may extend downward from a cumulonimbus cloud and reach the ground. Tornadoes are narrow storms that leave a narrow path of destruction on the ground. 

Measurements of the gaseous sulfur dioxide released were obtained with the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS Krueger, 1983) and with the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Spectrometer (SBUV Heath et d., 1983), both carried on the Nimbus 7 satellite. Three instruments on board the Solar Mesosphere Explorer (SME) also revealed features of the cloud the Infrared Radiometer measured the thermal emission from the aerosols, while the Visible and Near Infrared Spectrometers measured the backscat-tered solar radiation. The three instruments are limbscanning and view the atmosphere along the track of the sunsynchronous polar orbit (Barth et d., 1983 Thomas et d., 1983). Ground based and airborne spectro-photometric measurements of sulfur dioxide have also been carried out (Evans and Kerr, 1983). 

Krueger A.J., Sighting of El Chichon sulfur dioxide clouds with the Nimbus 7. Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer. Science , 220, 1377 (1983). 

In a few exceptional cases, the long-range transport of a discrete cloud of a chemical has been tracked. Figure 4-27, portraying data obtained by a spectrometer on the Nimbus 7 satellite, shows a time sequence of a cloud of sulfur dioxide (S02) emitted from the Cerro Hudson volcano in Chile (Doiron et al., 1991). In this case, advection carried the cloud in an easterly direction around Earth, during which time the cloud became larger but more dilute as a result of dispersion and mass deposition onto Earth s surface. 

Nimbus - heavy, dark clouds that represent thunderstorm clouds... 

In satellites, the filters are placed on the TV camera lenses. Filter No. 12 is the most frequently used. The TV photographs from Nimbus 3, due to the yellow filter known as minus blue filter , are characterized by the striking contrast of the cloud forma-... 

The Nimbus satellites (named after the Latin word for cloud ), like the manned satellites, are the only type of definite interest to earth scientists. As distinct from all other satellites, the Nimbus do not rotate around their own axis. Throughout their successive orbits, they maintain an attitude that could be called motionless if their speed were not 24000 km/h. The satellite is Earth-oriented and is three-axis stabilized. 

Fig. 28. Northern edge of the Gulf Stream Nimbus 2, nighttime channel, 3.5-4.2 / m, orbits 238-239, 2 June, 1966. Dark region contamination by clouds grey region transition area, due to satellite movement. Map prepared by G. Warnecke in 1966-1967. Inset Northern edge of the Gulf Stream. Different positions of the current s edge in October 1966 (Greaves et al., 1968).

Every day, photographic mosaics are made up from all orbits and from television and infrared data, giving a worldwide picture of the distribution of cloud masses, fronts, and atmospheric perturbations. With the ESSA and Nimbus, we have four shots available per 24 h (9 00 and 21 00 for ESSA, 12 00 and 24 00 for Nimbus). Thus, forecasts can be made with an accuracy unknown before the space age. 

Two of the participants in my remote detection seminar at San Diego State University (Laporte and McCarter, 1971), using Nimbus 2 cartograms, showed that it was possible not only to determine the cloud type but also to evaluate the activity of various types of weather, intensity of precipitation, wind direction, etc. 

Hauth, F. F. and Weinman, J. A. 1969, Investigation of Clouds Above Snow Surfaces Utilizing Radiation Measurements Obtained from the Nimbus II Satellite , Rem. Sens. Envir. 1, No. 1. 

The first chopped radiometer on a stabilized platform, functioning in a line by line scanning pattern perpendicular to the direction of spacecraft motion, was the High Resolution Infrared Radiometer (HRIR) on Nimbus II (1964) shown in Fig. 5.4.10. The purpose of the investigation was to obtain cloud images on the dark hemisphere... 

On Earth the same spectral interval (from 667 cm" to 800 cm"Q is suitable for temperature retrieval in cloud-free areas (Kaplan, 1959). Indeed, this spectral region served in the first derivations of the vertical temperature profile from the Nimbus 3 meteorological satellite, and initiated a new era in weather forecasting... 

Hand Conrath, 1969 Wark Hilleary, 1969). Nimbus 3 was launched into Earth orbit on 14 April, 1969. In this spectral region some interference by weak O3 absorption must be considered in precise analyses. On Venus, the use of the 667 cm CO2 band is restricted to altitudes above the opaque cloud deck at approximately 65 km above the solid surface. 

Fig. 6.2.4 Typical terrestrial emission spectra of cloud-free areas recorded over Central Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Antarctic from Nimbus 4 (Hand et al, 1972c).

Prabhakara, C., Fraser, R. S., Dalu, G., Man-Li, W. C., Curran, R. J., Styles, T. (1988). Thin cirrus clouds seasonal distribution over oceans deduced from Nimbus-4 IRIS. Applied Meteorology, 27, 379-99. 

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