New methods for calculating bare soil land surface temperature over mountainous terrain

Land surface temperature(LST) causes the phase change of water, links to the partitioning of surface water and energy budget, and becomes an important parameter to hydrology, meteorology, ecohydrology, and other researches in the high mountain cold regions. Unlike air temperature, which has common altitudinal lapse rates in the mountainous regions, the influence of terrain leads to complicated estimation for soil LST. This study presents two methods that use air temperature and solar position,to estimate bare LST with high temporal resolution over horizontal sites and mountainous terrain with a random slope azimuth. The data from three horizontal meteorological stations and fourteen LST observation fields with different aspects and slopes were used to test the proposed LST methods. The calculated and measured LST were compared in a range of statistical analysis, and the analysis showed that the average RMSE(root mean square error),MAD(mean absolute deviation), and R^2(correlation coefficient) for three horizontal sites were 5.09℃,3.66℃, 0.92, and 5.03℃, 3.52℃, 0.85 for the fourteen complex terrain sites. The proposed methods showed acceptable accuracy, provide a simple way to estimate LST, and will be helpful for simulating the water and energy cycles in alpine mountainous terrain.

Solar-tracking methodology based on refraction-polarization in Snell's window for underwater navigation

Underwater navigation system is an indispensable part for autonomous underwater vehicles.Due to the indiscernibility of satellite signal,however,the underwater navigation problem is quite challenging,and a satellite-free navigation scheme should be looked for.Polarization navigation,inspired by insects’capability of autonomous homing and foraging,is an alternative solution to satellite navigation with great application potential.Underwater polarization provides an indirect sun compass to animals for orientation determination.However,it is difficult to apply terrestrial solar-tracking methodologies in underwater situations due to the refraction of polarized skylight at the air–water interface.To resolve this issue,an underwater solar-tracking algorithm is developed based on the underwater refraction-polarization pattern inside the Snell’s window.By employing Snell’s law and Fresnel refraction formula to decouple the refractive ray bending and polarization deflection,the celestial polarization pattern is obtained based on underwater measurement.To further improve the accuracy,the degree of polarization is employed as a weight factor for E-vector.A long-lasting underwater experiment was conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach,and the results showed the root-mean-square errors of solar zenith and azimuth employing this algorithm were 0.3°and 1.3°,respectively.Our experimental results show that the refraction-polarization pattern inside the Snell’s window exhibits immense potential to improve the solar-tracking accuracy for underwater navigation.