Tropical Storm Jeanne, the Dominican Republic and Haiti
Tropical Storm Jeanne moving off from the Dominican Republic and Haiti, as seen by Envisat on 20 September 2004.
The storm passed across the north part of this shared island the weekend before, leaving more than 1000 people dead.
The poor nation of Haiti, on the west part of the island, bore the vast majority of casualties, because widespread deforestation has left its territory susceptible to flooding and mudslides from the rain that came with the storm. Below Haiti, at the base of the image, is seen Colombia on the South American mainland.
Jeanne has moved north of Haiti in succeeding days, circling in the Atlantic where it has strengthened to a full-fledged hurricane and is projected to hit the northern Bahamas and potentially Florida.
Envisat's Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) acquired this image. AATSR is an instrument that sees in visible as well as infrared spectral bands to return imagery and as well as temperature data for land, sea and clouds. It has a spatial resolution of 1 km and a 500 km swath.
AATSR has a dual-view design that provides stereoscopic imagery of cloud tops and structure along the direction of the satellite track – as in the second image, below. Its conical scan projects ahead and then downward in the along track direction.
To see the three-dimensional effect, look at it through a pair of red and blue 3-D glasses, wearing the blue side to the right.
