"CloudSat's radar performed flawlessly, and although the data are still very preliminary, it provided breathtaking new views of the weather on our planet," Graeme Stephens, CloudSat principal investigator and a professor at CSU Fort Collins, said in a statement. "All major cloud system types were observed, and the radar demonstrated its ability to penetrate through almost all but the heaviest rainfall."
This is a CloudSat image of a polar night storm near Antarctica. The top image shows the area being observed. The bottom image is a horizontal cross-section of clouds. The red spots represent rain or ice crystals, blue are thin clouds, and green is the horizon.
This CloudSat image shows a cross-section of tropical clouds and thunderstorms over eastern Africa. The layered view of storms like these give scientists a better idea of what is happening inside them. CloudSat's Cloud-Profiling Radar is more than 1,000 times more sensitive than typical weather radar and can distinguish between cloud particles and precipitation.
This CloudSat image shows a warm front storm over the Norwegian Sea. Images of the North Sea were the very first taken by the radar-activated satellite.