View on Bay of Bengal upwelling area on the basis of 19-years of satellite sea surface temperature

Abstract

The seasonal and interannual variation of upwelling along the east coast of India between 6°N and 22°N was studied for the period 1985–2003 using NOAA–AVHRR sea surface temperature data. The seasonal migration of pronounced upwelling, which follows the seasonal shift of the winds in transition period and northeast monsoon, was confined. The temporal mean sea surface temperature images clearly show the upwelling season, as does the seasonal sea surface temperature anomaly. These dominant features of the upwelling system are also the most variable, with most of the variance being explained by the seasonal cycle. Quasi-cyclic behaviour of sea surface temperature on interannual scales has also been observed.     

Seasonal dynamic pattern analysis on global FPAR derived from AVHRR GIMMS NDVI

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Global Inventory Modelling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI; AVHRR GIMMS NDVI for short) based fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) from 1982 to 2006 and focus on their seasonal and spatial patterns analysis. The available relationship between FPAR and NDVI was used to calculate FPAR values from 1982 to 2006 and validated by Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) FPAR product. Then, the seasonal dynamic patterns were analysed, as well as the driving force of climatic factors. Results showed that there was an agreement between FPAR values from this study and those of the MODIS product in seasonal dynamic, and the spatial patterns of FPAR vary with vegetation type distribution and seasonal cycles. The time series of average FPAR revealed a strong seasonal variation, regular periodic variations from January 1982 to December 2006, and opposite patterns between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Evergreen vegetation FPAR values were close to 0.7. A clear single-peak curve was observed between 30°N and 80°N – an area covered by deciduous vegetation. In the Southern Hemisphere, the time series fluctuations of FPAR averaged by 0.7° latitude zones were not clear compared to those in the Northern Hemisphere. A significant positive correlation (P<0.01) was observed between the seasonal variation of temperature and precipitation and FPAR over most other global meteorological sites.     

基于NOAA/AVHRR数据的北极反照率反演及其变化研究

极地海冰反照率直接影响极区的热收支,反照率的变化对地气系统热量收支平衡及气候变化等的研究具有重要意义。本文采用由美国国家海洋与大气管理局NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)发射的NOAA卫星携带的先进的甚高分辨率辐射仪AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) Level-1B (L1B) 数据,经宽带反射率转换、各向异性校正、大气订正、云检测等处理,得到4 km宽带晴空地表反照率产品。将AVHRR反照率与北冰洋地表热收支SHEBA (Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean)实验数据进行印证,印证结果显示在冰雪冻结期二者平均偏差为-0.07,标准偏差为0.05。本文处理了2008年—2010年的AVHRR数据,结合第4次北极科学考察现场观测数据研究了北极冰面月平均反照率的变化,从降雪和冰脊两个方面分析了反照率的变化,结果显示反照率在冰雪融化过程中变化约为0.3,变化较大且较为迅速,表面粗糙的多年冰海域和较为平滑的一年冰海域的反照率在雪融化时期变化约为0.2且变化相对缓慢。研究结果表明,由冰雪融化引起的反照率变化较为快速且幅度较大,是引起北极反照率变化的主导因素。     

Automatic searching of control point in NOAA AVHRR image

This paper discusses the approaches for automatical searching of control points in the NOAA AVHRR image on the basis of data rearrangement in the form of latitude and longitude grid. The vegetation index transformation and multi-level matching strategies have been proven effective and successful as the experiments show while the control point database is established.     

Using Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Maximum A Prior Probability (MAP) in Iterative Self‐Organizing Data (ISODATA)

Abstract

With the availability of high‐resolution satellite imagery featuring as high as 1 meter resolution in the panchromatic mode and 3‐meter resolution in the multispectral mode, there is an interest by many new commercial and public service applications such as cellular telephones coverage area design, urban/land cover planning, and real estate marketing to extract features from images automatically. To that end, the demand for unsupervised classification techniques is growing. In this paper, the Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Maximum A prior Probability (MAP) algorithms are used as decision rules to find boundaries of classes computed by the Iterative Self‐Organizing Data (ISOADATA) algorithm. Different satellite images with different resolutions were used to experiment with these algorithms. The results of comparing and analyzing the algorithms revealed that MAP‐ISODATA performed better than ML‐ISODATA even when the same initial matrix was used. It was shown that there was no significant difference between ML‐ISODATA and MAP‐ISODATA in terms of accuracy. It was also realized that better results could be obtained if homogenous initialization strategies were used.     

Observations of Mt. Etna volcanic ash plumes in 2006: An integrated approach from ground-based and polar satellite NOAA–AVHRR monitoring system

Mt. Etna, in Sicily (Italy), is one of the world's most frequent emitters of volcanic plumes. During the last ten years, Etna has produced copious tephra emission and fallout that have damaged the inhabited and cultivated areas on its slopes and created serious hazards to air traffic. Recurrent closures of the Catania International airport have often been necessary, causing great losses to the local economy. Recently, frequent episodes of ash emission, lasting from a few hours to days, occurred from July to December 2006, necessitating a look at additional monitoring techniques, such as remote sensing. The combination of a ground monitoring system with polar satellite data represents a novel approach to monitor Etna's eruptive activity, and makes Etna one of the few volcanoes for which this surveillance combination is routinely available.In this work, ash emission information derived from an integrated approach, based on comparing ground and NOAA–AVHRR polar satellite observations, is presented. This approach permits us to define the utility of real time satellite monitoring systems for both sporadic and continuous ash emissions. Using field data (visible observations, collection of tephra samples and accounts by local inhabitants), the duration and intensity of most of the tephra fallout events were evaluated in detail and, in some cases, the order of magnitude of the erupted volume was estimated. The ground data vs. satellite data comparison allowed us to define five different categories of Etna volcanic plumes according to their dimensions and plume height, taking into account wind intensity. Using frequent and good quality satellite data in real time, this classification scheme could prove helpful for investigations into a possible correlation between eruptive intensity and the presence and concentration of ash in the volcanic plume. The development and improvement of this approach may constitute a powerful warning system for Civil Protection, thus preventing unnecessary airport closures.     

Numerical study on the summer upwelling system in the northern continental shelf of the South China Sea

A three-dimensional baroclinic nonlinear numerical model is employed to investigate the summer upwelling in the northern continental shelf of the South China Sea (NCSCS) and the mechanisms of the local winds inducing the coastal upwelling, associated with the QuikSCAT wind data. First, the persistent signals of the summer upwelling are illustrated by the climatological the Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Sea Surface Temperature (SST) image over 1985–2006 and field observations in 2006 summer. Then, after the successful simulation of the summer upwelling in the NCSCS, four numerical experiments are conducted to explore the different effects of local winds, including the wind stress and wind stress curl, on the coastal upwelling in two typical strong summer upwelling regions of the NCSCS. The modeled results indicate that the summer upwelling is a seasonal common phenomenon during June–September in the NCSCS with the spatial extent of a basin-scale. Typical continental shelf upwelling characteristics are clearly shown in the coastal surface and subsurface water, such as low temperature, high salinity and high potential density in the east of the Hainan Island, the east of the Leizhou Peninsula and the southeast of the Zhanjiang Bay (noted as the Qiongdong-QD), and the inshore areas from the Shantou Coast to the Nanri Islands of the Fujian Coast (noted as the Yuedong-YD). The analysis of the QuikSCAT wind data and modeled upwelling index suggests that the local winds play significant roles in causing the coastal upwelling, but the alongshore wind stress and wind stress curl have different contributions to the upwelling in the Qiongdong (QDU) and the coastal upwelling in the Yuedong (YDU), respectively. Furthermore, model results from the numerical experiments show that in the YD the stable alongshore wind stress is a very important dynamic factor to induce the coastal upwelling but the wind stress curl has little contribution and even unfavorable to the YDU. However, in the QD the coastal upwelling is strongly linked to the local wind stress curl. It is also found that not only the offshore Ekman transport driven by the alongshore wind stress, the wind stress curl-induced Ekman pumping also plays a crucial effect on the QDU. Generally, the wind stress curl even has more contributions to the QDU than the alongshore wind stress.     

Modelling for prediction of global deforestation based on the growth of human population

Deforestation due to ever-increasing activities of the growing human population has been an issue of major concern for the global environment. It has been especially serious in the last several decades in the developing countries. A population-deforestation model has been developed by the authors to relate the population density with the cumulative forest loss, which is defined and computed as the total forest loss until 1990 since prior to human civilisation. NOAA-AVHRR-based land cover map and the FAO forest statistics have been used for 1990 land cover. A simulated land cover map, based on climatic data, is used for computing the natural land cover before the human impacts. With the 1990 land cover map as base and using the projected population growth, predictions are then made for deforestation until 2025 and 2050 in both spatial and statistical forms.     

基于AVHRR和VIRR数据的改进型Becker“分裂窗”地表温度反演算法

为了将基于NOAA-9/AVHRR数据提出的Becker和Li的“分裂窗”地表温度算法成功地应用于长序列NOAA/AVHRR和FY 3A/VIRR数据的地表温度反演,为气候变化研究提供长序列、高精度、高分辨率的地表温度数据集,从辐射传输方程出发,首先利用MODTRA 4.1模式模拟了多种地表和大气状态下的光谱辐亮度数据,并结合AVHRR和VIRR通道4、5的光谱响应函数建立了温度数据集(TS,T4,T5);然后,基于该数据集采用最小二乘法重新计算了Becker和Li算法中的各参数,提出了一个适用于NOAA/AVHRR和FY-3A/VIRR数据的改进型Becker和Li分裂窗地表温度反演算法;并利用改进型算法对2008年4月27日03时12分(世界时)观测的一景覆盖北京地区的NOAA-17/AVHRR数据进行了地表温度的反演,将反演结果与日本东京大学提供的同地区、同时相的MODIS地表温度产品进行了对比分析.结果表明,两种地表温度产品的相关系数为0.88,均方根偏差(RMSD)为2.1K;在两种地表温度差值图像的频率直方图上有69.6％的像元的值在±2K之内,37％的像元的值在±1K之内.     

Long term AVHRR observations of surface radiative flux from El Chichón crater lake (1996–2006)

It has been shown that due to the small surface of crater lakes, temperature surveillance is a problem using meteorological satellites. This is particularly true for El Chichón surface lake because it's about one tenth of an AVHRR pixel at nadir. In order to guarantee at least one unmixed pixel in AVHRR data, it is necessary to use only AVHRR data from NOAA satellite passes as close as possible to the nadir for the period 1996–2006, therefore AVHRR data of El Chichón's crater lake were only used it they were cloudless and had scan angles close to nadir. The analysis of the time series data shows that lake surface temperature had annual maximum values (> 35 °C) during 1996 and 1997 then surface temperature decay with a negative exponential trend reaching a steady state of about 30 °C in the last years (2004–2006). A seasonal temperature variation between the dry (December to May) and the wet (June to November) seasons is also observed. Differences between nocturnal and midday temperatures indicate the influence of lake energy emission (including reflectance) at midday under a strong short-wave solar radiation. Water surface radiative flux under these conditions reaches an average of 77.8 W m^− 2 and a maximum of 187.1 W m^− 2. Whereas nocturnal heat output from El Chichón crater lake has an average surface radiative flux of 20.4 W m^− 2 and a maximum of 74.3 W m^− 2.