Quantitative Characteristics Analysis of FY4A Satellite Products during a Thunderstorm Weather Process

Based on the lightning monitoring and FY4A satellite data in 12 periods during a thunderstorm,the relationship between lightning activity and four satellite digital products:blackbody radiation brightness temperature(TBB),cloud top temperature(CTT),cloud top height(CTH)and cloud top pressure(CTP)was quantitatively analyzed.The following conclusions were obtained:(1)at lightning location,90.5%of TBB values were less than 214.1 K;88.5%of CTT values were less than 207.7 K;88.5%of CTP values were less than 137.7 hPa,and 88.5%of CTH values were greater than 14872 m.At location without lightning,92.5%of TBB values were greater than 214.1 K;90.4%of CTT values were greater than 207.7 K;89%of CTP values were greater than 137.7 hPa,and 92%of CTH values were less than 14872 m.(2)Lightning activity was concentrated in the cloud area with TBB between 190-210 K,CTT between 185-210 K,CTP between 50-150 hPa and CTH between 12-18 km.Lightning intensity was roughly positively correlated with TBB,CTT and CTP,and negatively correlated with CTH.With the increase of CTH,lightning intensity decreased.(3)TBB,CTT,CTP and CTH can well indicate the location and activity frequency of lightning in thunderstorm weather.

Comparison of variability and change rate in tropospheric NO_(2) column obtained from satellite products across China during 1997–2015

Tropospheric NO_(2) column(TNC)products retrieved from five satellites including GOME/ERS-2(H,1997–2002),SCIAMACHY(S,2003–2011),OMI(O,2005–2015),GOME-2/METOP_A(A,2007–2013)and GOME-2/METOP_B(B,2013–2015)were compared in terms of their spatiotemporal variability and changes over China.The temporal series of H suggested an increasing trend of TNC from 1997 to 2002,those of S,O and A revealed further increasing trends until the highest level of TNC was reached in 2011,but decreasing trends were detected by those of O and B from 2011 to 2015.Seasonally,TNC was the highest in winter and the lowest in summer.Variability and changes from satellite TNC products are also analyzed in different regions of China.Spatially,it was the highest in North China and the lowest in Tibetan Plateau based on five datasets.Overall,TNCs from A,B and S were higher than that from O;and TNC from S was larger than that from A at the country level.The higher TNC the region has,the larger difference satellite products would show.However,different datasets reached a good agreement in the spatial pattern of trends in TNC with highly significant increasing trends detected in North China.

Validation of Three Satellite Precipitation Products in Two South-Western African Watersheds: Bandama (Ivory Coast) and Mono (Togo)

Satellite precipitation products are widely used in different domain, in area where there is a lack in observation. These have different spatio-temporal resolutions consequently resulting in different precipitation amounts depending on the product. The present study validates three satellite products, namely the Climate Hazard group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS), the Climate Research Unit (CRU) and the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) over Bandama and Mono river basins for 1981-2005 and 1981-2016 respectively by comparing them to the observation precipitation of the basin. The available studies are focused on the regional scale but not on a watershed scale for hydrological studies. The analysis reveals that all the products are strongly correlated to each other as well as to the observed data at basin level. The Lamb coefficient test shows that most all the chosen basin namely Bandama and Mono presents the same climatic indices. All the products present the same variability and trend as the observation at basins scale. By comparing those products to observation, CHIRPS product following by GPCP give the lowest mean absolute error (MAE) at annual and seasonal time scales while CHIRPS is followed by CRU at monthly scale. Overall, all products overestimate the precipitation at Bandama basin while they underestimate it over Mono river basin. The comparison over 1981-2017 period of the total annual precipitation increasing southern ward (from Sahel to the coastal zone) for all the three studied products which varies from 300 mm to 2400 mm/year. All the three products are not significantly different from one another and they all highlight the same areas of hotspot rainfall in the region. The same conclusion is made at monthly and seasonal scales. Therefore, any of these products especially CHIRPS can be used for study in this region due to its lowest bias and MAE.

Some Features of Black Carbon Aerosols Connected with Regional Climate Over Pristine Environment

The authors report the results of aethalometer black carbon(BC)aerosol measurements carried out over a rural(pristine)site,Panchgaon,Haryana State,India during the winter months of 2021-2022 and 2022-2023.They are compared with collocated and concurrent observations from the Air Quality Monitoring Station(AQMS),which provides synchronous air pollution and surface meteorological parameters.Secular variations in BC mass concentration are studied and explained with variations in local meteorological parameters.The biomass burning fire count retrievals from NASA-NOAA VIIRS satellite,and backward airmass trajectories from NOAA-ERL HYSPLIT Model analysis have also been utilized to explain the findings.They reveal that the north-west Indian region contributes maximum to the BC mass concentration over the study site during the study period.Moreover,the observed BC mass concentrations corroborate the synchronous fire count,primary and secondary pollutant concentrations.The results were found to aid the development of mitigation methods to achieve a sustainable climate system.

Evaluation of satellite land surface albedo products over China using ground-measurements

Land surface albedo(LSA)is an important parameter in surface energy balance and global climate change.It has been used in the fields of energy budgets,climate dynamics,and land surface processes.To apply satellite LSA products more widely,the product accuracy needs to be evaluated at different scales and under atmospheric and surface conditions.This study validates and analyzes the errors of the LSA datasets from the Global LAnd Surface Satellites(GLASS)product,the European Space Agency’s Earth Observation Envelope Programme(GlobAlbedo),the Quality Assurance for Essential Climate Variables(QA4ECV)project,the Gap-filled Snow-free Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function(BRDF)parameters product(MCD43GF),and the Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring(CM SAF)Albedo dataset from the AVHRR data(CLARA-SAL)against the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network(CERN)measurements at different spatiotemporal scales over China from 2005 to 2015.The results show that LSA estimated by GLASS agrees well with the CERN measurements on a continental scale.The GLASS product is characterized by a correlation coefficient of 0.80,a root-mean-square error of 0.09,and a mean absolute error of 0.06.The consistency between GLASS,GlobAlbedo,and CLARA-SAL is slightly lower over the regions with high aerosol optical depth(AOD)(e.g.Sichuan Basin,northern China)and high cloud cover compared with that in regions with lower AOD and low cloud cover.The estimation errors are related to varying atmospheric and surface conditions and increase with increasing AOD and cloud cover and decreasing enhanced vegetation index.Therefore,algorithms under complex atmospheric and surface conditions(e.g.high AOD,sparse vegetation)should be optimized to improve the accuracy of LSA products.

Satellite precipitation product:Applicability and accuracy evaluation in diverse region

Satellite precipitation products,e.g.,Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission version-07(hereafter TRMM)and its successor Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement(hereafter IMERG)are being used at a global scale for rainfall estimation.Recently,SM2RAIN-ASCAT(hereafter SM2RAIN)is a novel addition to satellite-based precipitation products which gives the rainfall estimates from the knowledge of soil moisture state and is based on‘bottom to top’approach.A comparative assessment of any newly developed product or a new version of the product is quite vital for algorithm developers and users.Hence,this research work was carried out to evaluate the accuracy and applicability of SM2RAIN,in comparison to in-situ data,TRMM,and IMERG in diverse regions of Pakistan.The comparative analysis was performed on a temporal scale(daily and monthly)and seasonal scale(spring,autumn,summer,and winter)using five performance metrics namely,root mean square error(RMSE),correlation coefficient(CC),false alarm ratio(FAR),the probability of detection(POD),and critical success index(CSI).The results showed that:(1)SM2RAIN is a better rainfall estimation product in the dry region(having avg.CC>0.35),however,less effective in hilly and mountainous terrain having high rainfall intensity;(2)SM2RAIN provides more satisfactory estimates in winter and autumn seasons,while relative poor in the summer season;(3)SM2RAIN performs better in terms of rainfall detection with an average POD of 0.61;(4)the overall performance of SM2RAIN is very convincing and it was concluded that SM2RAIN can be a feasible satellite product for most of the areas of Pakistan.It is noteworthy here to mention that this could be the preliminary assessment of SM2RAIN in diverse climatic zones of Pakistan.

Satellite detection of increases in global land surface evapotranspiration during 1984-2007

As a key component of digital earth,remotely sensed data provides the compelling evidence that the amount of water vapour transferred from the entire global surface to the atmosphere increased from 1984 to 2007.The validation results from the earlier evapotranspiration(ET)estimation algorithm based on net radiation(Rn),Normalised Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI),air temperature and diurnal air temperature range(DTaR)showed good agreement between estimated monthly ET and ground-measured ET from 20 flux towers.Our analysis indicates that the estimated actual ET has increased on average over the entire global land surface except for Antarctica during 1984
2007.However,this increasing trend disappears after 2000 and the reason may be that the decline in net radiation and NDVI during this period depleted surface soil moisture.Moreover,the good correspondence between the precipitation trend and the change in ET in arid and semi-arid regions indicated that surface moisture linked to precipitation affects ET.The input parameters Rn,Tair,NDVI and DTaR show substantial spatio-temporal variability that is almost consistent with that of actual ET from 1984 to 2007 and contribute most significantly to the variation in actual ET.

Estimation of fractional cycle bias for GPS/BDS-2/Galileo based on international GNSS monitoring and assessment system observations using the uncombined PPP model

The Fractional Cycle Bias(FCB)product is crucial for the Ambiguity Resolution(AR)in Precise Point Positioning(PPP).Different from the traditional method using the ionospheric-free ambiguity which is formed by the Wide Lane(WL)and Narrow Lane(NL)combinations,the uncombined PPP model is flexible and effective to generate the FCB prod-ucts.This study presents the FCB estimation method based on the multi-Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)precise satellite orbit and clock corrections from the international GNSS Monitoring and Assessment System(iGMAS)observations using the uncombined PPP model.The dual-frequency raw ambiguities are combined by the integer coefficients(4,−3)and(1,−1)to directly estimate the FCBs.The details of FCB estimation are described with the Global Positioning System(GPS),BeiDou-2 Navigation Satellite System(BDS-2)and Galileo Navigation Satellite System(Galileo).For the estimated FCBs,the Root Mean Squares(RMSs)of the posterior residuals are smaller than 0.1 cycles,which indicates a high consistency for the float ambiguities.The stability of the WL FCBs series is better than 0.02 cycles for the three GNSS systems,while the STandard Deviation(STD)of the NL FCBs for BDS-2 is larger than 0.139 cycles.The combined FCBs have better stability than the raw series.With the multi-GNSS FCB products,the PPP AR for GPS/BDS-2/Galileo is demonstrated using the raw observations.For hourly static positioning results,the performance of the PPP AR with the three-system observations is improved by 42.6%,but only 13.1%for kinematic positioning results.The results indicate that precise and reliable positioning can be achieved with the PPP AR of GPS/BDS-2/Galileo,supported by multi-GNSS satellite orbit,clock,and FCB products based on iGMAS.