Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies

The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies​, or CIMSS, is a cooperative institute between the University of Wisconsin-Madison, NOAA, and NASA. The CIMSS staff and scientists "conduct research using remote sensing systems for meteorological and surface-based applications."

Tropical Cyclones Tracker
When tropical cyclones are active, CIMSS operates a tropical cyclone tracking product. The tracker is an interface which can display hurricane-related overlays and satellite imagery to help track and forecast hurricanes.

Advanced Dvorak Technique (ADT)
Along with their satellite products, CIMSS satellites analyze tropical data to estimate the strength of tropical systems using the Dvorak technique. The estimated intensity of a tropical cyclone with the Dvorak technique is measured using an algorithm known as the Tropical Cyclone Intensity Estimation Algorithm (TCIEA), which takes into account satellite patterns and anomalies.

Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU)
CIMSS incorporates products from the AMSU instrument which is installed onto multiple weather imagery satellites. AMSU detects Earth-based microwave radiation to produce helpful images that can be analyze to examine a tropical cyclone. A type of AMSU, AMSU-A, detects energy given off by oxygen.

Satellite Consensus (SatCon)
Like the ADT product of CIMSS, SatCon is used to estimate the intensity of hurricanes and other tropical cyclones. However, while ADT bases their algorithm on standard satellite imagery, SatCon takes into account all CIMSS products and takes into account their recorded weaknesses and strengths to form a consensus and better estimate of the strength of a tropical cyclone.

Morphed Integrated Microwave Imagery at CIMSS (MIMIC)
MIMIC is a blend of 3 types of microwave imagery taken from 5 satellites: 89GHz, 85GHz, and 85 (A) GHz. MIMIC can be used to analyze the distribution of precipitation and the structure of the spiral banding and eyewall of tropical cyclones well before standard imagery like infrared and visible wavelengths can detect them. MIMIC has been used in the past to predict the timing and track the progress of eyewall replacement cycles. At CIMSS, MIMIC data can be viewed as animated sequences with 15-minute intervals between microwave imagery. A MIMIC-IR product is also provided along with MIMIC, and is basically MIMIC imagery that is used as an overlay over updated channel 4 infrared imagery.

MIMIC-Total Precipitable Water (MIMIC-TPW)
MIMIC-TPW follows the techniques used in standard MIMIC imagery to incorporate microwave-derived data to generate images revealing the moisture and precipitation content.