Global Hydrology Resource Center

The Global Hydrology Resource Center (GHRC) provides both historical and current Earth science data, information, and products from satellite, airborne, and surface-based instruments. The GHRC acquires basic data streams and produces derived products from many instruments spread across a variety of instrument platforms. The GHRC is supported by NASA and is the data management and user services arm of the Global Hydrology & Climate Center (GHCC) in Huntsville, Alabama. Space-based lightning observations are obtained from the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS), the Optical Transient Detector (OTD, 1995-2000), and surface validation networks in the continental U.S. and Brazil. Global hydrological parameters such as sea surface temperature, atmospheric water vapor, wind direction, and atmospheric temperature, are derived from several passive microwave instruments aboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), NOAA-15, NOAA-16, and Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) satellites. The GHRC is the host of the Passive Microwave Earth Science Information Partner (PM-ESIP), providing measurement of maximum tropical cyclone wind speeds, global tropospheric and atmospheric temperatures, and observations of tropical rainfall, sea surface temperature, and wind speed. The Convection and Moisture Experiment (CAMEX) archive provides data from the 1998 CAMEX-3 field experiment and has just completed the CAMEX-4 field experiment in Jacksonville Florida (August-September, 2001). CAMEX experiments produce high-resolution spatial and temporal information of hurricane structure, dynamics, and motion.