California Gets Slammed Again

  • Released Thursday, February 23, 2017
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California has been experiencing a drought since 2012, but the first months of 2017 have brought some relief in the form of torrential rains. These rains have been brought to California in a series of atmospheric rivers, long narrow channels of water vapor in the atmosphere that reach from tropical latitudes to the coast of California. These channels bring rainfall to the state when they are disrupted by atmospheric conditions over California's eastern mountains. This visualization of atmospheric water vapor and precipitation during the first three weeks of February clearly show the successive atmospheric rivers and the resulting rainfall.

This visualization combines precipitation data from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals (IMERG) and water vapor data from the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS). These datasets show the extreme rainfall that occurred in California during the first three weeks of February 2017 and the atmospheric rivers that transported the rain to the area.
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A global view of the IMERG precipitation and GEOS water vapor during the first three weeks of February 2017.

A north pole view of the IMERG precipitation and GEOS water vapor during the first three weeks of February 2017.

This is the color table for water vapor.

This is the color table for water vapor.

This is the color table for liquid precipitation.

This is the color table for liquid precipitation.

This is the color table for frozen precipitation.

This is the color table for frozen precipitation.

Triple color table for water vapor, liquid precipitation and solid precipitation

Triple color table for water vapor, liquid precipitation and solid precipitation

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Thursday, February 23, 2017.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 12:09 AM EST.

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Datasets used in this visualization

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