In a time series of imagery from NASA’s Aqua satellite, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument showed Tropical Storm Aere’s progress over the weekend on May 6 at 16:59 UTC, May 7 at 05:29 UTC, and Monday, May 9 at 05:17 UTC. Infrared data basically takes the temperature of a tropical cyclone’s clouds and the coldest areas indicate the strongest thunderstorms and areas of heaviest rainfall. Those coldest cloud temperatures (highest, strongest thunderstorms) and are as cold as or colder than -63F/-52C.

On May 6, when Aere was a tropical depression (03W) it appeared to be more concentrated with the heaviest rainfall and strongest thunderstorms over open ocean. By Saturday, May 7, those heavy rains overspread land areas. On Monday, May 9, the circulation seemed to become weaker and convection seemed to appear more scattered and has decreased in AIRS imagery.

Warnings are still in effect in the Philippines as Aere continues to move north. Public storm warning signal #1 is in effect in the following provinces: Luzon: Quirino, Ifugao, Mt. Province, Kalinga, Apayao and Batanes. Public storm warning signal #2 is in effect for: Luzon: Cagayan, Babuya and Calayan.

The four fatalities caused by Tropical Storm Aere occurred in Balatan, Camarines Sur where a landslide took three lives, and another person drowned in floodwaters in Leyte. Radio reports also noted that nine people at the Manila airport were injured when lightning struck a plane on the tarmac on May 7.

NASA’s TRMM satellite measures rainfall from space and data from it was used to create a map of total cyclone rainfall. The TRMM satellite is managed by both NASA and the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA.

At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite was used to create the cyclone rain maps. TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA), data were used in an analysis to show rainfall contributed by tropical cyclones that have affected Australia in 2011. Hal Pierce of the NASA TRMM team created the image and included the tracks of tropical cyclones on the image.

“The largest tropical cyclone rainfall contribution was over the coast of northwestern Australia with estimated totals of over 600 millimeters (~23.6 inches),” Pierce said. “Cyclones Bianca, Carlos, Twenty, Errol and their remnants were close enough to the northwestern coast of Australia to add to these rainfall totals.”