Search results for "Planet"

Towards a long-term dataset of ELBARA-II measurements assisting SMOS level-3 land product and algorithm validation at the Valencia Anchor Station

2015

[EN] The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission was launched on 2nd November 2009 with the objective of providing global estimations of soil moisture and sea salinity. The main activity of the Valencia Anchor Station (VAS) is currently to assist in a long-term validation of SMOS land products. This study focus on a level 3 SMOS data validation with in situ measurements carried out in the period 2010-2012 over the VAS. ELBARA-II radiometer is placed in the VAS area, observing a vineyard field considered as representative of a major proportion of an area of 50×50 km, enough to cover a SMOS footprint. Brightness temperatures (TB) acquired by ELBARA-II have been compared to those obser…

Ash-plume dynamics and eruption source parameters by infrasound and thermal imagery: The 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption

2013

During operational ash-cloud forecasting, prediction of ash concentration and total erupted mass directly depends on the determination of mass eruption rate (MER), which is typically inferred from plume height. Uncertainties for plume heights are large, especially for bent-over plumes in which the ascent dynamics are strongly affected by the surrounding wind field. Here we show how uncertainties can be reduced if MER is derived directly from geophysical observations of source dynamics. The combination of infrasound measurements and thermal camera imagery allows for the infrasonic type of source to be constrained (a dipole in this case) and for the plume exit velocity to be calculated (54–14…

Landsat and Local Land Surface Temperatures in a Heterogeneous Terrain Compared to MODIS Values

2016

Land Surface Temperature (LST) as provided by remote sensing onboard satellites is a key parameter for a number of applications in Earth System studies, such as numerical modelling or regional estimation of surface energy and water fluxes. In the case of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard Terra or Aqua, pixels have resolutions near 1 km 2 , LST values being an average of the real subpixel variability of LST, which can be significant for heterogeneous terrain. Here, we use Landsat 7 LST decametre-scale fields to evaluate the temporal and spatial variability at the kilometre scale and compare the resulting average values to those provided by MODIS for the same obser…

On the Dependence of Cirrus Parametrizations on the Cloud Origin

2019

<p>Particle size distributions (PSDs) for cirrus clouds are important for both climate models as well as many remote sensing retrieval methods. Therefore, PSD parametrizations are required. This study presents parametrizations of Arctic cirrus PSDs. The dataset used for this purpose originates from balloon-borne measurements carried out during winter above Kiruna (Sweden), i.e. north of the Arctic circle. The observations are sorted into two types of cirrus cloud origin, either in-situ or liquid. The cloud origin describes the formation pathway of the ice particles. At temperatures below −38 °C, ice particles form in-situ from solution or ice nuclea…

Evaluation of the MODIS Albedo product over a heterogeneous agricultural area

2013

In this article, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer MODIS Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function BRDF/Albedo product MCD43 is evaluated over a heterogeneous agricultural area in the framework of the Earth Observation: Optical Data Calibration and Information Extraction EODIX project campaign, which was developed in Barrax Spain in June 2011. In this method, two models, the RossThick-LiSparse-Reciprocal RTLSR which corresponds to the MODIS BRDF algorithm and the RossThick-Maignan-LiSparse-Reciprocal RTLSR-HS, were tested over airborne data by processing high-resolution images acquired with the Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner AHS sensor. During the campaign, airborne im…

The making of the New European Wind Atlas - Part 1: Model sensitivity

2020

This is the first of two papers that document the creation of the New European Wind Atlas (NEWA). It describes the sensitivity analysis and evaluation procedures that formed the basis for choosing the final setup of the mesoscale model simulations of the wind atlas. The suitable combination of model setup and parameterizations, bound by practical constraints, was found for simulating the climatology of the wind field at turbine-relevant heights with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Initial WRF model sensitivity experiments compared the wind climate generated by using two commonly used planetary boundary layer schemes and were carried out over several regions in Europe. They…

Retrieval of daily gross primary production over Europe and Africa from an ensemble of SEVIRI/MSG products

2018

The main goal of this paper is to derive a method for a daily gross primary production (GPP) product over Europe and Africa taking the full advantage of the SEVIRI/MSG satellite products from the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) sensors delivered from the Satellite Application Facility for Land Surface Analysis (LSA SAF) system. Special attention is paid to model the daily GPP response from an optimized Montheith's light use efficiency model under dry conditions by controlling water shortage limitations from the actual evapotranspiration and the potential evapotranspiration (PET). The PET was parameterized using the mean daily air temperatur…

The 2009 Edition of the GEISA Spectroscopic Database

2011

The updated 2009 edition of the spectroscopic database GEISA (Gestion et Etude des Informations Spectroscopiques Atmosphériques; Management and Study of Atmospheric Spectroscopic Information) is described in this paper. GEISA is a computer-accessible system comprising three independent sub-databases devoted, respectively, to: line parameters, infrared and ultraviolet/visible absorption cross-sections, microphysical and optical properties of atmospheric aerosols. In this edition, 50 molecules are involved in the line parameters sub-database, including 111 isotopologues, for a total of 3,807,997 entries, in the spectral range from 10-6 to 35,877.031cm-1.The successful performances of the new …

Evaluation of quasi-geoid model based on astrogeodetic measurements: case of Latvia

2021

Abstract Since the development of GNSS techniques, the determination of a precise quasi-geoid model has become even more actual. In terms of this project the staff of the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformatics (GGI) has developed a new quasi-geoid model based on DFHRS (Digital Finite-element Height Reference Surface) approach additionally using astrogeodetic measurements – vertical deflections (VD), which can be observed by a Digital zenith camera. This paper evaluates a quasi-geoid model results based on vertical deflections, as a study area using the territory of Latvia: the standard deviation of the solution is equal to 0.006 m with observation residuals after the adjustment of minimum …

2018

The Radar Vegetation Index (RVI) is a well-established microwave metric of vegetation cover. The index utilizes measured linear scattering intensities from co- and cross-polarization and is normalized to ideally range from 0 to 1, increasing with vegetation cover. At long wavelengths (L-band) microwave scattering does not only contain information coming from vegetation scattering, but also from soil scattering (moisture & roughness) and therefore the standard formulation of RVI needs to be revised. Using global level SMAP L-band radar data, we illustrate that RVI runs up to 1.2, due to the pre-factor in the standard formulation not being adjusted to the scattering mechanisms at these lo…