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Full catalog/hs3cimsstot
hs3cimsstot·v1·dataset

Storm clouds punching above the anvil, hurricane study (HS3)

Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) Tropical Overshooting Tops V1
atmosphere NASA GHRC_DAAC Level 4 KML
In plain English

What it measures. Maps where storm clouds punch up above the smooth anvil layer at the top of a thunderstorm — a sign of especially strong, deep convection. It is a browse-only picture product, not raw numbers.

How it's made. Derived from infrared images taken by the METEOSAT and GOES weather satellites during a NASA hurricane field campaign, packaged as map overlay files.

How & where you'd use it. Helps hurricane researchers spot the most intense parts of tropical storms and study how deep convection relates to storm formation and intensification.

What's measured

Atmosphere › Clouds › Convective Clouds/Systems (Observed/Analyzed)

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2014-08-14 → 2014-10-03
  • Measured byMETEOSAT-10 (SEVIRI) · GOES-15 (GOES-15 Imager)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-180, 12, -60, 52
  • FormatsKML
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) Tropical Overshooting Tops dataset contains browse only data showing tropical overshooting tops derived from METEOSAT and GOES satellites for the Hurricane and Severe Storm sentinel (HS3) field campaign. Goals for the HS3 field campaign included assessing the relative roles of large-scale environment and storm-scale internal processes, addressing the controversial role of the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) in tropical storm formation and intensification, and the role of deep convection in the inner-core region of storms. The browse only data files are available for dates between August 14, 2014 and October 3, 2014 at 15 minutes intervals in KML format.

Get the data

hs3cimsstot_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="hs3cimsstot",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from GHRC_DAAC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.