- What: Observe and calibrate extreme surface winds in hurricanes with Sentinel-1
- Where: Gulf of Mexico and Western Atlantic Ocean
- When: August-September 2016, during peak hurricane season
- Participants: ESA/ESRIN, ESA/ESTEC, EUMETSAT, CSIC, NOAA, NASA
SHOC, standing for Satellite Hurricane Observation Campaign, is a campaign planned during the 2016 hurricane peak season (August and September) which aims at collecting observations over hurricanes in order to provide a synoptic view of hurricane development and evolution. Sentinel-1 data is the key resource of the SHOC experiment.
The main goal of this campaign is to acquire a maximum of Sentinel-1 products over hurricane eyes or edges, co-located with other data sources. One important constrain is to take benefit of the efforts done at NHC, the National Hurricane Center (USA), to collect measurements during air flights with both radiometers and drop-sounders. This leads us to focus the campaign on the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), and West North Atlantic, a place known for its strong tropical cyclone activity, particularly peaking in August/September.
During this campaign, SHOC consortium will benefit from additional support from NOAA in distributing hurricane forecast track and from ESA S1 mission planning in enabling late programming acquisition over hurricane tracks.
News and results on SHOC will be distributed on the website as the campaign evolves.
Example of hurricane forecast cone based on NOAA provided information and used by Sentinel-1 Mission Planning team