File:ERN Jason3 hurricane square (24336351140).png

English: Twitter ideas:

Hurricanes need warm water to intensify. #Jason3 will have its eye on future storms. www.nesdis.noaa.gov/jason-3/index.html

1. Jason3 will monitor ocean water heat content to improve hurricane forecasting. www.nesdis.noaa.gov/jason-3/index.html

Facebook: Hurricanes need warm water to intensify. Jason-3 will monitor this upper ocean heat content (OHC), which is a critical factor in forecasting the intensity of hurricanes as they approach the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts.

Altimetry data (the height of the sea surface) can be used to infer ocean heat content. Sea surface temperature plays a role, but is only a "skin temperature." Hurricanes, and particularly strong or slow-moving hurricanes, tend to mix the ocean very effectively, so if the warm water at the surface does not extend down very far, a hurricane can actually kill itself off by bringing up cold water under itself and constraining its energy source. Ocean heat content is generally understood to be a more useful predictor of hurricane intensity change than sea surface temperature alone. More info the many applications of Jason-3 data, such as improved forecasting of events like El Niño, can be found here: www.nesdis.noaa.gov/jason-3/mission.html#applications

Jason-3 will maintain the Nation’s satellite altimetry observations of global sea surface height that began in 1992 with the TOPEX/Poseidon mission. It follows the Ocean Surface Topography Mission on the current operational altimeter satellite, Jason-2. As with Jason-2, Jason-3 is an international cooperative mission, in which NOAA is partnering with NASA, the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES, France’s governmental space agency) and European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). A nominal three year lifetime is planned for Jason-3 with a possibility of a two year extended mission. Learn more: www.nesdis.noaa.gov/jason-3/mission.html