Typhoon Haishen

Typhoon Haishen is currently approaching south-east Japan and is expected to make landfall on Sunday. At the time of writing the storm is a category four storm but there are signs that it may develop into a category 5 storm.

To put the above animation of the storm into some spatial context - the eye of the storm is around 36 miles wide. The satellite imagery used to create this short animation comes from the Himawari-8 satellite.The satellite imagery was downloaded from Himawari Real-Time. Himawari-8 is a satellite in geostationary orbit at 140.7 degrees East. It provides near real-time imagery of an area of Earth covering Australia, Japan and eastern China.

You can also create animated GIFs from Himawari-8 satellite imagery using the RAMMB/CIRA Slider. The RAMMB/CIRA Slider allows you to view (and create animations from) satellite imagery from a number of different satellites in geosationary orbit above different locations around the world. The RAMMB/CIRA Slider link above lets you view an animation of the growth of tropical storm Haishen from the 3rd to 4th Sep from Himawari-8 satellite imagery.