A paper entitled “Satellite-Based Characterization of Convection and Impacts from the Catastrophic 10 August 2020 Midwest U.S. Derecho” led by Jordan Bell (ST11) has been accepted by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. This manuscript takes a comprehensive look at the historic August 10, 2020 derecho that traversed the Central United States from a satellite remote sensing perspective.
The first part of the manuscript uses observations from both polar and geostationary satellite remote sensing platforms to track movement of and observe the movement of the derecho. The second part of the manuscript looks at impacts of the derecho including using the VIIRS Day Night Band to assess impacts to the power grid. The final part of the manuscript highlights the use of ESA’s Setinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to observe the derecho’s impacts on corn and soybean fields across Iowa and western Illinois. This analysis includes deriving an estimate of the acres damaged to these two crops and comparing them to others estimates that were derived through different analysis that used remote sensing.
ST11 co-authors include Chris Schultz, Andrew Molthan, Sarah Bang, Lori Schultz and Dan Cecil. UAH co-authors include Alex Melancon and Emily Wisinski. Additional co-authors from LaRC, University of Oklahoma, the Iowa State Climatologist, Illinois State Climatologist, and 3 National Weather Service WFOs (Des Moines, Quad Cities/Davenport and Chicago) contributed analysis and insights. This work was supported by the NASA Applied Sciences Disasters Program and the early online release of the manuscript can be found at: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/aop/BAMS-D-21-0023.1/BAMS-D-21-0023.1.xml.
