scholarly journals Ground mobile observation system for measuring multisurface microwave emissivity

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 7069-7078
Author(s):  
Wenying He ◽  
Hongbin Chen ◽  
Yuejian Xuan ◽  
Jun Li ◽  
Minzheng Duan ◽  
...  

Abstract. Large microwave surface emissivities with a highly heterogeneous distribution and the relatively small hydrometeor signal over land make it challenging to use satellite microwave data to retrieve precipitation and to be assimilated into numerical models. To better understand the microwave emissivity over land surfaces, we designed and established a ground observation system for the in situ observation of microwave emissivities over several typical surfaces. The major components of the system include a dual-frequency polarized ground microwave radiometer, a mobile observation platform, and auxiliary sensors to measure the surface temperature and soil temperature and moisture; moreover, observation fields are designed comprising five different land surfaces. Based on the observed data from the mobile system, we preliminarily investigated the variations in the surface microwave emissivity over different land surfaces. The results show that the horizontally polarized emissivity is more sensitive to land surface variability than the vertically polarized emissivity is: the former decreases to 0.75 over cement and increases to 0.90 over sand and bare soil and up to 0.97 over grass. The corresponding emissivity polarization difference is obvious over water (>0.3) and cement (approximately 0.25) but reduces to 0.1 over sand and 0.05 over bare soil and almost 0.01 or close to zero over grass; this trend is similar to that of the Tb polarization difference. At different elevation angles, the horizontally/vertically polarized emissivities over land surfaces obviously increase/slightly decrease with increasing elevation angles but exhibit the opposite trend over water.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenying He ◽  
Hongbin Chen ◽  
Yuejian Xuan ◽  
Jun Li ◽  
Minzheng Duan

Abstract. Large microwave surface emissivities with a highly heterogeneous distribution make it challenging to use satellite microwave data to retrieve precipitation and to be assimilated into numerical models over land. To better understand the microwave emissivity over land surfaces, we designed and established a ground observation system for the in situ observation of microwave emissivities over several typical surfaces. The major components of the system include a dual-frequency polarized ground microwave radiometer, a mobile observation platform, and auxiliary sensors to measure the surface temperature and soil temperature and moisture; moreover, observation fields are designed comprising five different land surfaces. Based on the observed data from the mobile system, we preliminarily investigated the variations in the surface microwave emissivity over different land surfaces. The results show that the horizontally polarized emissivity is more sensitive to land surfaces than is the vertically polarized emissivity: the former decreases to 0.75 over cement and increases to 0.90 over sand and bare soil and up to 0.97 over grass. The corresponding emissivity polarization difference is obvious over water (> 0.3) and cement (approximately 0.25) but reduces to 0.1 over sand and 0.05 over bare soil and almost 0.01 or close to zero over grass; this trend is similar to that of the Tb polarization difference. At different elevation angles, the horizontally/vertically polarized emissivities over land surfaces obviously increase/slightly decrease with increasing elevation angle but exhibit the opposite trend over water.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 2206
Author(s):  
Ying Wu ◽  
Bo Qian ◽  
Yansong Bao ◽  
George P. Petropoulos ◽  
Xulin Liu ◽  
...  

The Qinghai-Tibetan plateau plays an important role in climate change with its unique characteristics, and the surface emissivity is an important parameter to describe the surface characteristics. It is also very important for the accurate retrieval of surface and atmospheric parameters. Different types of surface features have their own radiation characteristics due to their differences in structure, water content and roughness. In this study, the microwave land surface emissivity (10.65, 18.7, 23.8, 36.5 and 89 GHz) of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau was calculated using the simplified microwave radiation transmission equation under clear atmospheric conditions based on Level 1 brightness temperatures from the Microwave Radiation Imager onboard the FY-3B meteorological satellite (FY-3B/MWRI) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction Final (NCEP-FNL) Global Operational Analysis dataset. Furthermore, according to the IGBP (International Geosphere-Biosphere Program) classified data, the spectrum and spatial distribution characteristics of microwave surface emittance in Qinghai-Tibetan plateau were further analyzed. The results show that almost all 16 types of emissivity from IGBP at dual-polarization (vertical and horizontal) increase with the increase of frequency. The spatial distribution of the retrieving results is in line with the changes of surface cover types on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, showing the distribution characteristics of large polarization difference of surface emissivity in the northwest and small polarization difference in the southeast, and diverse vegetation can be clearly seen in the retrieving results. In addition, the emissivity is closely related to the type of land surface. Since the emissivity of vegetation is higher than that of bare soil, the contribution of bare soil increases and the surface emissivity decreases as the density of vegetation decreases. Finally, the source of retrieval error was analyzed. The errors in calculating the surface emissivity might mainly come from spatiotemporal collocation of reanalysis data with satellite measurements, the quality of these auxiliary datasets and cloud and precipitation pixel discrimination scheme. Further quantitative analysis of these errors is required, and even standard procedures may need to be improved as well to improve the accuracy of the calculation.


Polar Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Neitzel ◽  
Aino Hosia ◽  
Uwe Piatkowski ◽  
Henk-Jan Hoving

AbstractObservations of the diversity, distribution and abundance of pelagic fauna are absent for many ocean regions in the Atlantic, but baseline data are required to detect changes in communities as a result of climate change. Gelatinous fauna are increasingly recognized as vital players in oceanic food webs, but sampling these delicate organisms in nets is challenging. Underwater (in situ) observations have provided unprecedented insights into mesopelagic communities in particular for abundance and distribution of gelatinous fauna. In September 2018, we performed horizontal video transects (50–1200 m) using the pelagic in situ observation system during a research cruise in the southern Norwegian Sea. Annotation of the video recordings resulted in 12 abundant and 7 rare taxa. Chaetognaths, the trachymedusaAglantha digitaleand appendicularians were the three most abundant taxa. The high numbers of fishes and crustaceans in the upper 100 m was likely the result of vertical migration. Gelatinous zooplankton included ctenophores (lobate ctenophores,Beroespp.,Euplokamissp., and an undescribed cydippid) as well as calycophoran and physonect siphonophores. We discuss the distributions of these fauna, some of which represent the first record for the Norwegian Sea.


2011 ◽  
Vol 139 (5) ◽  
pp. 1389-1409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juerg Schmidli ◽  
Brian Billings ◽  
Fotini K. Chow ◽  
Stephan F. J. de Wekker ◽  
James Doyle ◽  
...  

Three-dimensional simulations of the daytime thermally induced valley wind system for an idealized valley–plain configuration, obtained from nine nonhydrostatic mesoscale models, are compared with special emphasis on the evolution of the along-valley wind. The models use the same initial and lateral boundary conditions, and standard parameterizations for turbulence, radiation, and land surface processes. The evolution of the mean along-valley wind (averaged over the valley cross section) is similar for all models, except for a time shift between individual models of up to 2 h and slight differences in the speed of the evolution. The analysis suggests that these differences are primarily due to differences in the simulated surface energy balance such as the dependence of the sensible heat flux on surface wind speed. Additional sensitivity experiments indicate that the evolution of the mean along-valley flow is largely independent of the choice of the dynamical core and of the turbulence parameterization scheme. The latter does, however, have a significant influence on the vertical structure of the boundary layer and of the along-valley wind. Thus, this ideal case may be useful for testing and evaluation of mesoscale numerical models with respect to land surface–atmosphere interactions and turbulence parameterizations.


2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. 1817-1831 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Alkhaier ◽  
G. N. Flerchinger ◽  
Z. Su

Abstract. Understanding when and how groundwater affects surface temperature and energy fluxes is significant for utilizing remote sensing in groundwater studies and for integrating aquifers within land surface models. To investigate the shallow groundwater effect under bare soil conditions, we numerically exposed two soil profiles to identical metrological forcing. One of the profiles had shallow groundwater. The different responses that the two profiles manifested were inspected regarding soil moisture, temperature and energy balance at the land surface. The findings showed that the two profiles differed in three aspects: the absorbed and emitted amounts of energy, the portioning out of the available energy and the heat fluency in the soil. We concluded that due to their lower albedo, shallow groundwater areas reflect less shortwave radiation and consequently get a higher magnitude of net radiation. When potential evaporation demand is sufficiently high, a large portion of the energy received by these areas is consumed for evaporation. This increases the latent heat flux and reduces the energy that could have heated the soil. Consequently, lower magnitudes of both sensible and ground heat fluxes are caused to occur. The higher soil thermal conductivity in shallow groundwater areas facilitates heat transfer between the top soil and the subsurface, i.e. soil subsurface is more thermally connected to the atmosphere. For the reliability of remote sensors in detecting shallow groundwater effect, it was concluded that this effect can be sufficiently clear to be detected if at least one of the following conditions occurs: high potential evaporation and high contrast between day and night temperatures. Under these conditions, most day and night hours are suitable for shallow groundwater depth detection.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaocheng Liu ◽  
Chenming Zhang ◽  
Yue Liu ◽  
David Lockington ◽  
Ling Li

<p>Estimation of evaporation rates from soils is significant for environmental, hydrological, and agricultural purposes. Modeling of the soil surface resistance is essential to estimate the evaporation rates from bare soil. Empirical surface resistance models may cause large deviations when applied to different soils. A physically-based soil surface model is developed to calculate the surface resistance, which can consider evaporation on the soil surface when soil is fully saturated and the vapor flow below the soil surface after dry layer forming on the top. Furthermore, this physically-based expression of the surface resistance is added into a numerical model that considers the liquid water transport, water vapor transport, and heat transport during evaporation. The simulation results are in good agreement with the results from six soil column drying experiments.  This numerical model can be applied to predict or estimate the evaporation rate of different soil and saturation at different depths during evaporation.</p>


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander J. Roberts ◽  
Margaret J. Woodage ◽  
John H. Marsham ◽  
Ellie J. Highwood ◽  
Claire L. Ryder ◽  
...  

Abstract. Global and regional models have large systematic errors in their modelled dust fields over West Africa. It is well established that cold pool outflows from moist convection (haboobs) can raise over 50 % of the dust over the Sahara and Sahel in summer, but parameterised moist convection tends to give a very poor representation of this in models. Here, we test the hypothesis that an explicit representation of convection improves haboob winds and so may reduce errors in modelled dust fields. The results show that despite varying both grid-spacing and the representation of convection there are only minor changes in dust aerosol optical depth (AOD) and dust mass loading fields between simulations. In all simulations there is an AOD deficit over the observed central Saharan dust maximum and a high bias in AOD along the west coast: both features consistent with many climate (CMIP5) models. Cold pool outflows are present in the explicit simulations and do raise dust. Consistent with this there is an improved diurnal cycle in dust-generating winds with a seasonal peak in evening winds at locations with moist convection that is absent in simulations with parameterised convection. However, the explicit convection does not change the AOD field significantly for several reasons. Firstly, the increased windiness in the evening from haboobs is approximately balanced by a reduction in morning winds associated with the breakdown of the nocturnal low-level jet (LLJ). Secondly, although explicit convection increases the frequency of the strongest winds, these are still weaker than observed, especially close to the observed summertime Saharan dust maximum: this results from the fact that although large mesoscale convective systems (and resultant cold pools) are generated, they have a lower frequency than observed and haboob winds are too weak. Finally, major impacts of the haboobs on winds occur over the Sahel, where, although dust uplift is known to occur in reality, uplift in the simulations is limited by a seasonally constant bare soil fraction in the model, together with soil moisture and clay fractions which are too restrictive of dust emission in seasonally-varying vegetated regions. For future studies, the results demonstrate 1) the improvements in behaviour produced by the explicit representation of convection, 2) the value of simultaneously evaluating both dust and winds and 3) the need to develop parameterisations of the land surface alongside those of dust-generating winds.


Author(s):  
Marija Šperac ◽  
Dino Obradović

The urbanization process significantly reduced the permeability of land surfaces, which affected the changes of runoff characteristics and the relations in the hydrological cycle. In urban environments, the relationships within the hydrological cycle have changed in quantity, in particular: precipitation, air temperature, evaporation, and infiltration. By applying the green infrastructure (GI) to urban environments is beneficial for the water resources and the social community. GI has an effect on the improvement of ecological, economic, and social conditions. Using GI into urban areas increases the permeability of land surfaces, whereby decreasing surface runoff, and thus the frequency of urban floods. It also has a significant influence on the regulation of air quality, water purification, climate change impact, and the changes in the appearance of the urban environment. When planning and designing the GI, it is necessary to identify the type of GI and determine the size and location of the selected GI. Since each urban environment has its own characteristics, it is necessary to analyze them before deciding on the GI. The paper analyzed meteorological parameters (precipitation, air temperature, insolation, air humidity) affecting the selection of GI types, using the specific example of an urban environment – the City of Osijek, Croatia. Significant parameters when designing GI are operation and maintenance These parameters directly affect the efficiency of GI. The proper selection of GI and its location results in maximum gains: the reduction of land surface drainage - drainage of the sewage system, purification and retention of precipitation at the place of production, the improvement of air quality, and the improvement of living conditions in urban environments


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