Search results for "Remote sensing"
showing 10 items of 1262 documents
The airborne mass spectrometer AIMS – Part 1: AIMS-H<sub>2</sub>O for UTLS water vapor measurements
2016
Abstract. In the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS), the accurate quantification of low water vapor concentrations has presented a significant measurement challenge. The instrumental uncertainties are passed on to estimates of H2O transport, cloud formation and the role of H2O in the UTLS energy budget and resulting effects on surface temperatures. To address the uncertainty in UTLS H2O determination, the airborne mass spectrometer AIMS-H2O, with in-flight calibration, has been developed for fast and accurate airborne water vapor measurements. We present a new setup to measure water vapor by direct ionization of ambient air. Air is sampled via a backward facing inlet that inclu…
Evaluation of Surface Temperature and Emissivity Derived from ASTER Data: A Case Study Using Ground-Based Measurements at a Volcanic Site
2010
Abstract The land surface temperature (LST) and emissivity (LSE) derived from Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) data were evaluated in a low spectral contrast volcanic site at an altitude of 2000 m on the island of Tenerife, Spain. The test site is almost flat, thermally homogeneous, and without vegetation cover or variation in its surface composition. ASTER data correspond to six scenes, under both day- and nighttime conditions during 2008. This case study analyzes the impacts of the sources of inaccuracies using the temperature–emissivity separation (TES) algorithm. Uncertainties associated with inaccurate atmospheric correction were minimized by means…
Estimation of the time lag occurring between vegetation indices and aridity indices in a Sicilian semi-arid catchment
2009
The evolution of drought phenomena in a Sicilian semi-arid catchment has been analyzed processing both remote sensing images and climatic data for the period 1985-2000. The remote sensing dataset includes Landsat TM and ETM+ multispectral images, while the climatic dataset includes monthly rainfall and air temperature. The results have been specifically discussed for areas where it is possible to neglect agricultural activities and vegetation growth is only influenced by natural forcing. The main outcome of this study is the quantification of the time lag between the remote sensing retrieved vegetation indices and the aridity indices (AIs) calculated from climatic data. Moreover the obtaine…
Saharan dust absorption and refractive index from aircraft-based observations during SAMUM 2006
2009
During the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment (SAMUM) conducted in summer 2006 in southeast Morocco, the complex refractive index of desert dust was determined from airborne measurements of particle size distributions and aerosol absorption coefficients at three different wavelengths in the blue (467 nm), green (530 nm) and red (660 nm) spectral regions. The vertical structure of the dust layers was analysed by an airborne high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL). The origin of the investigated dust layers was estimated from trajectory analyses, combined with Meteosat 2nd Generation (MSG) scenes and wind field data analyses. The real part n of the dust refractive index was found almost constant w…
Carbon Stocks in Peri-Urban Areas: A Case Study of Remote Sensing Capabilities
2014
Peri-urban areas are the extension of cities into contiguous areas, where households and farms coexist. Carbon stocks (CSs) assessment, a concept here extended to urban features, has not yet been studied in depth over peri-urban areas due to uncertainties in such CSs quantification, level of detail required about construction materials, and the high spatial variability of those stocks. Remote sensing (RS)-based techniques have been successfully utilized in urban areas for assessing phenomena such as soil sealing, sprawl patterns, and dynamics of surface imperviousness, especially focusing on land cover classification at high to medium spatial scales. Over the floodplain study area of Emilia…
Validation of Landsat-7/ETM+ Thermal-Band Calibration and Atmospheric Correction With Ground-Based Measurements
2010
Ground-based measurements of land-surface temperature (LST) performed in a homogeneous site of rice crops close to Valencia, Spain, were used for the validation of the calibration and the atmospheric correction of the Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) thermal band. Atmospheric radiosondes were launched at the test site around the satellite overpasses. Field-emissivity measurements of the near-full-vegetated rice crops were also performed. Seven concurrences of Landsat-7 and ground data were obtained in July and August 2004-2007. The ground measurements were used with the MODTRAN-4 radiative transfer model to simulate at-sensor radiances and brightness temperatures, which were c…
Analysis of broadband surface BRDFs derived from TOA SW CERES measurements for surfaces classified by the IGBP land cover
2012
Most studies on the reflectance properties of the Earth's surface are addressed estimating the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) of high spatial resolution and high spectral resolution satellite measurements. This article assesses the development of broadband (BB) BRDFs from radiances corresponding to large footprints classified according to the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) land-cover classification. Top-of-atmosphere (TOA) shortwave (SW) CERES (Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System) measurements are employed to invert the bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) Rahman–Pinty–Verstraete (RPV) model for regions identified with the same IGBP typ…
Optimizing LUT-based radiative transfer model inversion for retrieval of biophysical parameters using hyperspectral data
2012
Inversion of radiative transfer models using a lookup-table (LUT) approach against hyperspectral data streams leads to retrievals of biophysical parameters such as chlorophyll content (Chl), but necessary optimization strategies are not consolidated yet. Here, various regularization options have been evaluated to the benefit of improved Chl retrieval from hyperspectral CHRIS data, being: i) the role of added noise, ii) the role of multiple best solutions, and iii) the role of applied cost functions in LUT-based inversion. By using data from the ESA-led field campaign SPARC (Barrax, Spain), it was found that introducing noise and opting for multiple best solutions in the inversion considerab…
Monitoring daily evapotranspiration at a regional scale from Landsat-TM and ETM+ data: Application to the Basilicata region
2008
Summary The increasing interest of hydrological, climatic and meteorological models in the different components of the surface energy balance has encouraged the development of operational methods for estimating surface energy fluxes at a regional scale. In this paper, a sequence of three high-resolution satellite-based surface energy fluxes images are analyzed over an extensive area with a large variety of land uses. Two images from Landsat 7-ETM+ (1999, 2002) and one from Landsat 5-TM (2004) are collected covering the whole Basilicata region (Southern Italy). A Simplified version of a Two-Source Energy Balance (STSEB) model is used to retrieve the surface sensible heat flux. A balance betw…
Image simulation of geostationary sensor dedicated to ocean color
2010
A method of image simulation of geostationary sensor dedicated to ocean color for open water (case1) and coastal water (case2) is presented in this paper. This method uses HYDROLIGHT to model the radiative transfer in order to obtain the water surface radiance. MeRIS level 3 products have been used for input water components to provide a realistic spatial distribution. The atmospheric radiative transfer model and the sensor model finely lead to satellite remote sensing images. This system allows to evaluate the dynamic range of BOA and TOA radiances depending on solar and viewing angles in operational situation and latter their influence on water composition retrieval.