Atmospheric Remote Sensing
Weather Forecasting
• Cannot exist without telecommunications
• Most fundamental ideas are very recent
No Weather Forecasting
• He said to the crowd: "When you see a cloud
rising in the west, immediately you say, 'It's
going to rain,' and it does. And when the
south wind blows, you say, 'It's going to be
hot,' and it is. (Luke 12:54-55)
• People could interpret local, immediate
weather signs
No Weather Forecasting
• Little travel
• No telecommunications
• The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear
its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes
from or where it is going. (John 3:8)
• As far as anyone knew, weather originated
spontaneously and locally
• All meteorology is remote sensing
What Are We Sensing?
• 1600’s and 1700’s: Basic weather instruments
invented
• 1743: Benjamin Franklin deduces that storms move
• 1802-1803: Luke Howard classifies cloud types
• 1806: Francis Beaufort introduces his system for
classifying wind speeds.
• 1840’s: Telegraph invented
• 1854: Jean Joseph Leverrier demonstrated that a
devastating storm could have been tracked and
predicted if telegraph had been in use
Weather Mapping
• 1849: Smithsonian Institution institutes
observing system in U.S.
• 1860: Robert FitzRoy
– Produces the first synoptic charts
– Coined the term "weather forecast"
– Published the first ever daily weather forecasts
• 1873: Army Signal Corps issues first hurricane
prediction
• 1900 Galveston blind-sided by hurricane
Weather Map, 1874
1905 Weather Map of US
Modern Weather Forecasting
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1902: Stratosphere discovered
1902: Radio
Norwegians pioneered modern weather forecasting
World War I inspired the name “front”
1930: First radiosonde
1944: First radar detection of hurricane
WWII: Jet streams discovered
1948: First successful tornado prediction
1954: Sweden starts first real-time numerical
predictions
First Modern
Concept of
Fronts
First U.S. Weather Map With
Fronts
Scales in Meteorology
• Microscale: kilometers
• Mesoscale: tens of kilometers
• Synoptic: hundreds or thousands of kilometers
– Weather Maps
• Global
– Wind belts
– El Nino and other oscillations
Atmospheric Remote Sensing
• Even in pre-satellite days, weather observing
was one of the first applications envisioned for
satellites.
• In 1954, a rocket photograph showed a storm
system that later caused a flood and inspired
creation of a weather satellite program
• Vanguard II (1959) was a prototype weather
satellite but only partially successful
TIROS 1
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Television Infrared Observation Satellite
Launched April 1, 1960
First successful weather satellite
Altitude 468 miles
First
Weather
Satellite
Image
Nimbus Series
• 7 satellites, launched 1964-1978
• Transmitted data until 1994
• Pioneered atmospheric pressure
measurements by satellite
– Measures optical effects of pressure on
atmosphere
• Monitored ozone hole depletion
Defense Meteorological Satellite
Program (DMSP)
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First launched 1962
Declassified 1972
Most advanced night imaging capabilities
Still active
DMSP
Night
Image
DMSP Image of Japan and Korea
Aurora over the US
The Perfect Low, 19 April 2006
The “Chi-clone” 26 Oct. 2010
Typhoon
Longwang
GOES
• Geostationary Operational Environmental
Satellite
• GOES-11 (West) at 135 W over Pacific
• GOES-12 (East at 75 W over Atlantic)
• GOES-13 and -14 in storage orbits
GOES
• Imager: Multi-channel visible and IR
• Sounder: vertical atmospheric temperature
and moisture profiles, surface and cloud top
temperature, and ozone distribution
• Ground-based meteorological platform data
collection and relay
• Space environment monitor
• Beacon locators for search and rescue
Global Water Vapor, July 2009
Carbon Dioxide Sensing
• Pulsed LIDAR
– One frequency absorbed by CO2, one not
– Ratio of return signals = CO2 concentration
• Absorption
– Measure strength of CO2 absorption
– Compare with oxygen absorption to get
concentration
March 9, 2011
Cloud Top temperatures
Cloud Classification
Cloud Top Pressure
Precipitation
Lightning Strikes
Global Lightning
Particulate Matter
• Natural: Volcanic, smoke, wind-blown dust
• Anthropogenic: Smoke, exhaust, construction,
agriculture
• In pre-industrial times, visibility over 100 km
was normal
• Unusual haze was very abnormal and noted
– “Dry fogs” are records of volcanic eruptions
– Great “Smoky” Mountains
Pollution over
India
The view from
Tibet
Sea of pollution
Over India
Image from the
Shuttle
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Mottarone, Italy, June 2001
Towards equal
distribution of
Pollution around
the world
Marmin, Nepal March 2001
(V. Ramanathan)
Dust and pollution over
Lago Magiore, Italy
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Does Population cause Pollution ?
POLDER aerosol index Feb. 1997 &
population density
(Kaufman, Tanré & Boucher, Nature 2002)
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Global Albedo
Multi-Angle Scanning
• Intersecting lines of sight allows threedimensional modeling
• Slant viewing eliminates reflections off water
(sun glitter)
• Different viewing angles allows
characterization of surfaces
– Phase Angle
MISR Images (0, 45, 60, 75
degrees)
MISR and Oil Spill
Limb Viewing
Solar Occultation
GPS Occultation
Finding a Window