Satellite skills and knowledge for operational meteorologist
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Regis Borde from Eumetsat explains in his presentation how winds are derived from polar orbiting satellites in the Arctic and Antarctic region.
Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs) have been derived from geostationary satellites since late seventies. In 2001, an experimental polar wind product has been developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s (CIMSS) using imagery from MODIS instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite. Filling the lack of observational data over Polar Regions this product demonstrated a global positive impact on the forecast not only over polar areas. Following the initial CIMSS developments, EUMETSAT recently started to extract polar winds from METOP AVHRR instrument. Regis Borde´s session will provide some general information about the current status of polar winds product and about its extraction. The general methodology to derive polar winds from satellite images is mainly based on the heritage used for geostationary satellites, but some specific problems had to be considered due to larger timeliness between consecutive images, to characteristics of the instruments and to specificities of polar areas atmosphere.
Joseph Sienkiewicz provides an overview of the measuring principles of scatterometers on polar orbiters. The presentation concludes on practical examples showing also attenuation effect by rain droplets.
Ocean surface vector winds derived from polar satellite based scatterometers (radars) allow marine forecasters to view high resolution wind fields over the global ocean. Operational forecasters first access to near real time ocean vector winds began in the early 1990s with the launch of ERS-1 and followed by ERS-2, NASA's NSCAT and QuikSCAT. Of these instruments QuikSCAT, during its ten year life span, provided a wide swath capability allowing forecasters to see entire storms in a single swath. Today, ASCAT on Metop-A, OSCAT on Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) OceanSat-2 satellite and in the near future ASCAT-B on Metop-B will continue to provide global coverage. Scatterometer winds provide forecasters a high resolution "sea" truth, give an enhanced situational awareness, the ability to assess the validity of numerical model initial conditions and short term forecasts, and the location and intensity of warning criteria winds. This talk will discuss the above issues by giving examples and also discuss how to interpret remotely sensed ocean winds.
Nan Hao from DLR gives an overview on ozone and other trace gases products from the O3M SAF. The presentation is completed by numerous examples.
This lecture focuses on the ozone and other minor trace gas products, such as NO2 and SO2, from the GOME-2 and IASI instruments on MetOp. These products are developed in the framework of EUMETSAT’s Satellite Application Facility on Ozone and Atmospheric Chemistry Monitoring (O3M-SAF), as part of EUMETSAT’s Polar System (EPS) Ground Segment. The O3M-SAF is responsible for the algorithm development, the operational processing, dissemination and archiving of the products, as well as providing User Services. The ozone and minor trace gas products from GOME-2 and IASI are used in research of atmospheric composition, like ozone loss, dynamics, anthropogenic effects, and in applications of environmental security, like monitoring of volcanic eruptions and pollution.
This webcast contains 2 presentations: The first is from Lourdes Bugalho who talks about the forest fire combined risk index (ICRIF) and the second presentation is from Renata Libonati about monitoring burnt areas from polar orbiting satellites.
First part:
Forest fires are one of the most devastating natural disasters that often occur in mainland Portugal during the summer, with an impact on the economy, environment and climate. The Institute of Meteorology, currently Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA, Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera) has long made efforts to provide daily information on the risk of forest fires. Currently, IPMA daily runs an index of forest fire risk based on FWI (Fire Weather Index), developed by the Canadian Forest Service. This new index, ICRIF (Indice Combinado de Risco de Incêndios Florestais ) combines FWI with the type and condition of vegetation, called structural risk, being the vegetation type based on CORINE 2000 (CLC2000) and the vegetation conditions based on daily observation of NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), retrieved from the AVHRR radiometer.
Second part:
Brazilian Amazonia together with the adjacent savanna (Cerrado) presents a huge number of fire events every year. In such context, accurate information about location and extent of burned area is required and of particular interest for the scientific communities dealing with meteorological and climate models in what concerns reliable estimations of biomass burned. Accordingly, an effort has been made by the scientific community to develop thematic products of burnt areas. In such context, this presentation will provide an overview of INPE/Brazil currently efforts in monitoring burned areas. The initiative is based on the (V,W) burned index. The index uses daily reflectance obtained from the 1km MODIS Level 1B calibrated radiance from bands 2 (NIR) and 20 (MIR). An overview will be given of results obtained and operational applications will be shown.
Go to Webcast (first part from L. Bugalho) ...
Go to Webcast (second part from R. Libonati) ...
Powerpoint (first part from L. Bugalho) ...
Powerpoint (second part from R. Libonati) ...
Nuno Moreira from IPMA guides you through the web sites mentioned in the presentations during the Polar Satellites Week.
In this session you will be taken on a website tour, visiting pages where polar satellite products referred during the whole EUMETRAIN Polar Satellite Week can be visualized. “Web-Visits” will naturally include EUMETSAT or NOAA pages and it will be an opportunity to make a wrap-up on the contents previously discussed...
Piet Stammes from KNMI talks about aerosol retrieval with GOME-2 instrument onboard MetOp satellites since 2006. Intercomparison with other instrument data and examples round up the presentation.
Aerosols are small liquid or solid particles in the atmosphere, like soil dust, sulphate and nitrate droplets, organic compounds, volcanic ash, etc.. Aerosols affect weather and climate by reflection and absorption of sunlight, by affecting cloud formation and precipitation, and by reducing visibility. Satellite detection of aerosols is often difficult because of the relatively weak reflectance of aerosols as compared to clouds and the background reflection of the underlying surface. Using UV-Visible spectrometers like OMI and GOME-2, UV absorbing aerosols like biomass burning smoke, volcanic ash and desert dust can be detected, even in cloudy cases and over land surfaces. In this presentation the current and future aerosol products from GOME-2 available from the O3MSAF will be introduced.
NOAA satellite analyst Sheldon Kusselson shows the variety of water vapour products available from polar platforms. A practical example concludes his presentation.
Since 1992 operational NOAA satellite analysts and forecasters have used polar orbiting microwave products to complement and supplement geostationary satellite, observational and computer model data to further improve precipitation forecasts. My session will provide an overview of current SSMIS and NOAA/MetOp MHS and AMSU polar orbiting microwave products, like Total Precipitable Water (TPW) and Rain Rate (RR) and how they can be used to help enhance precipitation forecasts with an emphasis on the eastern North Atlantic Ocean into the European continent. From these different individual satellite sensors microwave TPW and RR products have come a new class of satellite product called “the blended or merged product” that will also be discussed, displayed and compared with EUMETSAT geostationary satellite imagery. A case study showing these blended/merged TPW and RR products for the February 2010 Madeira storm will also be shown.
Steve Ackerman gives an introduction on cloud detection methods used to segregate cloud free from cloud contaminated satellite pixel.
Early in the history of polar orbiting satellite, imaging instruments were included to detect and classify clouds. Steve Ackerman will begin with a brief historical look at these first observations. This presentation will discuss the types of algorithms developed and applied to visible and infrared observations from the NOAA series, the two NASA EOS and the EUMETSAT MetOp platforms. Steve Ackerman will discuss areas of strength and weakness in cloud detection from these platforms and will end by exploring some climate and regional applications of the cloud analyzes from some of these cloud images.
Adam Dybbroe presents Nowcasting SAF products developed for polar satellites. He gives an overview on existing and future products retrieved from MetOp and NPP satellite data.
The EUMETSAT SAF to support Nowcasting (NWCSAF) develops two software packages, one for Geostationary imagery and one for polar satellite imagery. Both packages retrieve Cloud and other parameters relevant for Nowcasting and short range forecasting. The Polar Platform System (PPS) software package retrieves information on clouds and precipitation. The parameters/products derived are, Cloud Mask, Cloud Type, Cloud Top Temperature and Height, Precipitating Clouds, and a number of cloud microphysical parameters (e.g. liquid water path and cloud phase). The first version of PPS was released in 2004, and it was originally developed to run on local direct readout data from NOAA and Metop (AVHRR and AMSU/MHS). But recently it has been extended to run also on NPP/VIIRS data. And PPS is now also capable of running on many different data formats and services. It is currently being introduced on the EARS Network to run on NOAA19 and Metop-A. In this presentation Adam Dybbroe will give an overview of how PPS works, but the main focus will be on the parameters and products that can be derived with PPS, and how they can be used in Nowcasting applications.
Storm Xynthia developed over the North Atlantic in late February 2010. The ASCAT sensor of EUMETSAT MetOp-A satellite tracked its evolution and provided insight into the life cycle of the storm.
In this presentation Nuno Moreira talks about Xynthia, a storm that affected North Atlantic and Europe in the end of February 2010. He focuses on the cyclogenesis process, which fits the classification of a "bomb", and on the remote observations of the storm. This observation does not only cover MSG imagery, but also ASCAT wind data and derived mean sea level pressure estimates. The advantages and disadvantages of using ASCAT wind in nowcasting for this kind of storms is also discussed.
The presenter gives an overview into the mechanisms of convective lines connected to winter storms such as Emma.
Convective lines in connection with intense cyclogenesis hit Middle and Western Europe almost every winter season. These lines move very quickly and are often connected with thunderstorms, heavy gusts and graupel or even hail. In this presentation the related conceptual model and the preconvective environment will be explained. Based upon different satellite products and additional data two examples will be discussed.
Presentation of Winter-Storm Emma which severely affected Central Europe with heavy downbursts and thunderstorms.
On 1 March 2008, the powerful late winter cyclone Emma caused widespread damage and claimed 14 lives in Central Europe. Embedded in the synoptic-scale storm field, deep convection along the cold front played a significant role in further enhancing the wind gusts. This presentation aims to unfurl an outstanding case of a rapid cyclogenesis, to match the events at the earth's surface with the storm structures seen in satellite and radar data, and finally to track down possible mechanisms which may have contributed to paving the way for one of the strongest downbursts ever documented worldwide.