On September 15, 2009, the A-Train formation happened to fly over the super-typhoon Choi-wan. Just one such event can yield enormous amounts of data of various science content and format from the diverse A-Train sensors.  Plotting quickly  retrievals like cloud profiles, cloud top temperatures, rain rates,  water vapor content, etc.,  for head-to-head previews, is the strength of the Giovanni  web tool. An example of the  tool output is shown on the left. Apart from these 2-dimensional plots, Giovanni provides KMZ (GoogleEarth) format of the vertical atmospheric profiles (far left). Thus, it is now possible to combine horizontal and vertical data layers in one three-dimensional object, and preview data from different geometrical aspects. The far left plate shows a snapshot from a GoogleEarth KMZ file where CloudSat profiles are pictured together with MODIS/Aqua true-color image, and AMSR-E rain rate.

(Download the KMZ).