Remote sensing data
Overview of remote sensing data that may be useful for hydrological analysis
| Institute | Satellite | Sensor | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ESA | ENVISAT | ASAR | APG HH and HV -> delineation of water bodies |
| NASA | ?? | AVHRR | http://www.nsof.class.noaa.gov, cloud cover |
| NASA | EOS AQUA | AMSR-E | ?? |
| ESA | METEOSAT | ?? | MSG-1 aka Meteosat-8 (launched 2002) carries the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI). SEVIRI continuously the entire earth disk at a frequency of 15 minutes and has 12 spectral channels, 8 of which can be used for monitoring the earth surface. Channel 12 is a high resolution visible (hrv) channel, which has a resolution of 1 km at the sub-satellite point (1.5 – 2 km over Europe). All of the other channels have a spatial resolution of 3 km at the sub-satellite point (5 – 6 km over Europe). |
| ??? | MERIS | ?? | NDVI? CLOUD COVER? 260x290m |
| NASA | TRMM | ?? | 25x25km resolution (0.25°), rainfall |
| NASA | ASTER | ?? | temperature, reflectance, elevation. On demand, and does not seem to exist for the tropical Andes |
| NASA | TERRA/AQUA | MODIS | http://www.landcover.org |
Some more information
general
ESA is a very big engine and it is tricky to find what you are actually looking for or what you need but there is lots:
The following link is a shortcut to ESA's 'Resources' page that includes upcoming workshops, the ESA library, data samples and archives, and probably most useful for anyone working with ESA data, there are ESA-tailored software tools that run free-of-charge on Windows, linux and also MAC (although MAC versions are usually appearing a bit later than the other two!).
http://earth.esa.int/resources/ P.S. I attended an ESA Land Training course in Lisbon in September 2007 on Flooding/Soil moisture and Forests and have lots of lecture notes on ASAR, ALOS and how to use these data with the BEST, BEAM and POLSARPRO packages (I have actually worked with an ALOS quadpol for tree height and soil moisture retrieval: amazing data!). If you want any of these notes or some help, just email me (guy.schumann@bristol.com) and I'll try to help!
There is a useful tool from the ESA website to search for available images (does ENVISAT and others):
meteosat
The channels of SEVERI on board meteosat-8 (spectral band / μm)
(from http://las.physik.uni-oldenburg.de/eProceedings/vol05_1/05_1_de-ruyter1.pdf)
| Channel | min | max | description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.635 | 0.56 | 0.71 visual |
| 2 | 0.81 | 0.74 | 0.88 visual |
| 3 | 1.64 | 1.50 | 1.78 near infrared |
| 4 | 3.90 | 3.48 | 4.36 infrared |
| 5 | 6.25 | 5.35 | 7.15 infrared (water vapour absorption) |
| 6 | 7.35 | 6.85 | 7.85 infrared (water vapour absorption) |
| 7 | 8.70 | 8.30 | 9.1 infrared |
| 8 | 9.66 | 9.38 | 9.94 infrared (ozone absorption) |
| 9 | 10.80 | 9.80 | 11.80 infrared |
| 10 | 12.00 | 11.00 | 13.00 infrared |
| 11 | 13.40 | 12.40 | 14.40 infrared (CO2 absorption) |
| 12 | 0.75 | 0.60 | 0.90 high resolution visual broadband (hrv) |
downscaling techniques
statistical
singular vector decomposition
Bretherton CS, Smith C, Wallace JM. 1992. An intercomparison of methods for finding coupled patterns in climate data. Journal of Wilks DS. 1995. Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences. Climate 5: 541–560