satellites GEOG 370

SMAP Global [Soil Moisture] SOIL Moisture

ACTIVE PASSIVE

• Provide soil moisture data across globe

• Include surface and subsurface soil moisture (mm), soil moisture profile (%), surface and subsurface soil moisture anomalies

• USEFUL FOR: model-based soil moisture predictions, especially for areas of the world that lack accurate precipitation data

• sun synchronous

Copernicus Global Land service: [Land → forest, crops]

• Continuous classification scheme that gives detailed global land cover map at 100m resolution

• Updated annually

• Data includes: forest types, quality indicators

• Can be used for forest monitoring, crop monitoring, biodiversity and conservation, monitoring environment and security

• sentinel-2, CLMS, sun synchronous

Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

• Monitor composition of atmospheric gases

• Combine measurement and remote sensing imagery from satellites

• Daily info about global atmospheric composition (different atmospheric gases)

  • Greenhouse gases (CO2 and methane)

  • Reactive gases (CO, oxidized nitrogen compounds, sulfur dioxide)

  • Ozone

  • Aerosols

• European commission

Sentinel-5P NRTI NO2 (Near Real-Time Nitrogen Dioxide)

Sentinel-5P NRTI CH4

Sentinel -5p NRTI AER AI (near real time UV aerosol index)

SENTINEL-5P NRTI SO2

sentinel -5p NRTI CLOUD

Sentinel-5P NRTI Ozone

Sentinel- 5p NRTI formaldehyde

Sentinel-5p NRTI CO sensor

Sentinel-2 Multispectral instrumen

• First of atmospheric composition Sentinels

• TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) abroad

• Takes near real-time measurements of stratospheric and tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (precursor for atmospheric ozone)

• Planned for a mission of at least 7 years

measure methane

• Launched in 2017 from Plesetsk, Russia

• Inclination of 98.7º in a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit.

• This means that the satellite is always lit by the sun at the same angle

• The instrument used as the sensor on the satellite is called the TROPOMI instrument

• TROPOMI - TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument

• The goal of the satellites mission was to perform high spatio-temporal resolution measurements on the atmosphere checking for things like air quality and ozone.

• The European Space Agency (ESA)’s Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor (S5P) carries the TROPOMI (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument) that produces the NRTI SO2 dataset. 

• The S5P is the first of the Sentinels and has been in commission for 7 years (since October 13th, 2017)

• Measure atmosphere

• Algorithms used: OCRA (Optical Cloud Recognition Algorithm)-retrieves UV, ROCINN (Retrival of Cloud Information using neural networks)- cloud top height and optical thickness

• Cloud fraction

• Cloud height

• Cloud optical thickness

• Near real time data about density of ozone layer and location

• Part of european program

• Utilizes TROPOMI instrument control unit (ICU) - records within troposphere

• Launched 2017

• Sun-synchronous ~800 km

• Monitors atmospheric HCHO levels (formaldehyde)

• ESA

• Equipped with tropospheric monitoring instrument (TROPOMI) has near real-time carbon monoxide (CO) sensor

• Can detect other gasses like nitrogen dioxide, ozone, etc.

• Daily gas readings and sun-synchronous orbit

Part of ESA copernicus program

• Equipped with with multispectral instrument, capturess data in 13 spectral bands

• Ranges from visible (VIS) to near-infrared (NIR) and shortwave infrared (SWIR) at resolutions of 10, 20, 60 meters

• Sensor high revisit frequency (5 days globally) ensures timely an detailed monitoring of land changes

AVHRR sea surface temperature

• [A Very High Resolution Radiometer]

• Part of meteorological satellites

• Measure sea temperature twice a day

• Multiple NOAA polar-orbiting satellites

• How data is measured: infrared detection, scanning mechanism, radiometric calibration, data processing, integration with other data

AVHRR leaf area index (LAI)

• evaluate vegetative stress

• track one sided green leaf area per unit of ground surface area

AVHRR (Advanced very high resolution radiometer) Aerosols:

• Collect aerosol optical depth (AOD) data to see concentration of aerosols over ocean

• Monitor amount of aerosols in the air

Application

• Useful for air quality control

• Aerosols impact climate change

• Researchers use long-term data to study pollution trends in china

• Slightly less radiometric accuracy than other sensors

AVHRR surface reflectance (land)

• Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer

• Used in eight different NOAA series satellites from 1981 to 2014

• Measures light in red and near infrared spectral ranges

• Applications for NDVI

Open Buildings V3 Polygons

• Large scale open dataset consisting of outlines of buildings

• Building includes: polygon of footprint, confidence score, plus code corresponding to center of building

• Dataset has 1.8B building detections in Africa, Latin America, Carribean, South Asia, Southeast Asia

TOMS-EP (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer-Earth Probe)

• Measure total ozone content in atmospheric column from the earth’s surface to upper atmospheric boundary under any geophysical daily conditions

• Launched in 1996, used to map distribution of atmospheric ozone layer as well as antarctica ozone hole and how it changes from year to year

Sentinel 3 OLCI (Ocean and Land Cover Instrument) EFR [satellite]

• Designed to measure

  • Sea-surafce topography

  • Sea and land surface temperature

  • Ocean color

  • Land color

• Info helps give info about composition of ocean waters, phytoplankton levels, costal processes and sediment distribution

EO-1 Hyperion Hyperspectral Imager

• High resolution hyperspectral imager producing 220 unique spectral channels

• Show reflectance on different bands over a year (different wavelengths)

Real-time mesoscale analysis (RTMA)

• Measure: Wind speed & direction, temp, dew point, surface temperature, total cloud amount, accumulated precipitation

• Made in 2006

• Gridded weather analysis

• Measures the span of 1 hour?? Maybe

• National Weather Service Offices: create localized weather models, situational awareness

• RU (Real Update): fast, low latency analysis products, 15 minutes

Visible infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS)

• spectrometer/radiometer

• Collect visible and infrared wavelengths from global satellite observations

• Orbit: sun-synchronous, polar

• Swath dimensions: 3000km (nearly global coverage every day)

• 22 channels from .41 nanometers to 12.01 nanometers

  • 5 high resolution image bands, 16 moderate-resolution bands, panchromatic day/night bands to observe nighttime lights

Aqua: 

• Part of NASA earth observing system

• Launched on may 4th 2002

• Collect data on earth water cycle, including oceans, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, ice, and atmospheric water vapor

• Free drift mode

• Has little fuel left so stopped further orbit-controlling maneuvers

Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS-2)

• Japanese satellite launched in 2014 sun-synchronous orbit, controlled autonomously with on-board computer

• Observes earth using Phase-Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar 2 (PALSAR-2)

  • Type off synthetic aperture radar

  • Send pulses of energy to the earth and then records what energy the earth has reflected back

  • 3 observation modes: spotlight, Stripmap, ScanSAR mode

  • The modes allow for different resolutions and polarization types

Advanced Land Observing satellite (ALOS)

• Japanese satellite

• Part of ESA

• Launched jan 24 2006

• Easy visualization of earth observation data with new HEDAVI tool modes

Google Street View Air Quality

• High resolution air pollution mapping with google street view cars

• Aclima Ei sensor and data acquisition platform cAN BE ATTACHED TO GOOGLE STREET VIEW CARS TO MONITOR AND REcord pollutant levels across multiple locations

Sentinel-2 Multispectral instrument [satellite]

• Part of ESA copernicus program

• Equipped with with multispectral instrument, capturess data in 13 spectral bands

• Ranges from visible (VIS) to near-infrared (NIR) and shortwave infrared (SWIR) at resolutions of 10, 20, 60 meters

• Sensor high revisit frequency (5 days globally) ensures timely an detailed monitoring of land changes

Landsat 9 [satellite]

• Part of landsat satellite series

• Provide open access to long-term tracking of land cover changes

• Launched september 2021

• Introduced OLI-2 (new and improved Operational Land Imager-2) 

• TIRS-2 (thermical infrared sensor-2) which addresses issues present in landsat 8

• Acquisition of up to 740 scenes per day

NAIP (National agriculture imagery program):

• Administered through USDA’s Farm production and conservation business center (FPAC-BC)

• Produce 4 band (R,G,B,N) aerial imagery at high spatial resolution

• Imagery taken during growing seasons (‘leaf on’) with the purpose of assessing vegetation and agriculture over time

Dynamic World GEE Dataset

• “Near realtime, 10m-resolution, global land use land cover dataset”

• Dataset show constantly updated map of land use around the world

• 9 classes of land use

• Updates every 2-5 days depending on location

• Based on sentinel-2 top of atmosphere satellite imagery

• Use AI Platform to analyze and classify every pixel

GRIDMET: Conus [continuos united states] Drought Indices (dataset)

• Often used for specific regions (likely US)

• Higher resolution data on climate and meteorology

• 4 x 4km

• Daily temporal data 1979 → now

• Accounts precipitation, wind speed, temperature, evapotranspiration, and solar radiation

• Combines with PRISM and NLDAS-2 data sources

ASTER [the advanced spaceborne thermal emission and reflection radiometer]

• Joint project between NASA and japan’s ministry of economy trade and industry (METI)

• Part of large flagship satellite called Terra launched by NASA

• Orbits earth in sun synchronous polar orbit

• Provide detailed map of earth’s surface and high resolution images of earth

GEDI [global ecosystem dynamic investigation] L2A raster canopy top height- version 2

• Lidar technology to provide 3D observations about earth’s surface, mainly pertaining to forest canopy height, surface elevation, and overall surface structure

• Examined for assessment of environmental processes, carbon and water cycles, implications on biodiversity, forest management, habitat loss

• System installed in the International Space Stattion (ISS)

Planet SkySat Public Ortho Imagery, RGB

• Used in creation of skyscript dataset; described as a vision language benchmark designed for remote sensing applications

• Leverages data from multiple high-resolution satellite sources, to create diverse and semantically rich collection of image-text pairs

• High resolution imagery made it essential for development of skyscript

• Useful for identifying and categorzing fine scale features like waterways, roads, and building types

NOAA CDR PATMOS X

• PATMOS-x uses Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data to generate consistent climate data records of atmospheric and surface properties, with a focus on cloud-related measurements.

• Global cloud monitoring, climate studies, polar regions, tropical and oceanic regions

Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite

• NASA and Japan monitor tropical and subtropical precipitation and associated energies

• Non-sun synchronous 

• Gradient colors in map represent microwave-based precipitation estimates

• Sensor package includes multiple elements

• Precipitation Radar (PR)

  Microwave Image (TMI)

  Quantifies water vapor, rainfall intensity, provides quantitative data

  Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS)

  Detects radiation and temperature

FIRMS (Fire Information for resource Management system)

• Developed in 2007 and FIRMS US/Canada map was launched in 2021

• Uses satellite observations from MODIS and VIRS to detect active fires and thermal anomalies 

• Delivers in near real time (within 3 hours) 

• Helps provide resources for fire data and fire analysis efforts 

MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer):

• On Terra and AQUA spacecrafts

• Data is transmitted to ground stations in White Sands, New Mexico, via the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS).

• Data is forwarded to the EOS Data and Operations System (EDOS) at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

• Data Processing:

• - MODIS Adaptive Processing System (MODAPS): Processes Level 1, geolocation, cloud mask, and higher-level land and atmosphere products.

• - Ocean Color Data Processing System (OCDPS): Processes ocean color products.

• - Processed products are distributed to the science and applications community.

GRACE (gravity recovery and climate experiment)

• Two satellites launched by NASA and DLR (the German space agency) in 2002 

• Measures Earth’s gravitational field monthly changes 

• Measured through the distance between the two satellites 

• Dataset visualizes “deviations of mass in terms of vertical extent of water in centimeters”

PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation)

• measures the light intensity within the 400-700 nanometer wavelength range, which is the spectral range that plants use for photosynthesis. 

• Applications of PAR measurements include evaluating crop yield potential, assessing the health of forests and grasslands, and studying the impacts of changing light conditions on vegetation.

• Can measure crop canopies of whatever