NASA Ozone Satellite Improves Snowstorm Forecasts

False color image from NOAA's GOES-8 satellite shows cloud cover in blue and the center of the snow storm is just southeast of the Delmarva Peninsula in the Mid-Atlantic on Feb. 25, 2000

Scientists in sunny, hot Florida are thinking cold thoughts since they added ozone measurements from a NASA satellite into computer weather forecast models and improved several factors in a forecast of a major winter snowstorm that hit the United States in 2000.

When scientists added ozone measurements, predictions of snowstorm intensity, snowfall amounts and the storm track all improved for a storm that hit Washington, D.C. As such, they may be able to do the same for
future storms, according to a study published in a recent issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Applied Meteorology.

Kun-Il Jang and Xiaolei Zou, research scientists from Florida State University, used data from NASA's Earth Probe/Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) satellite to create a more accurate prediction of a
January 2000 snowstorm in the Washington metropolitan area. Other researchers included Mel Shapiro of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Environmental Technology Laboratory (ETL), Manuel Pondeca of NOAA's National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), C. Davis of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, Colo., and A. Krueger of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

For more on how satellites are assisting with forecasting snowstorms, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/
2003/0808forecast.html

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