A5103153892- Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
- Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones Research
- Flood Risk Assessment and Management
- Remote Sensing in Agriculture
- Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Applications and Techniques
- Infrared Target Detection Methodologies
- Impact of Light on Environment and Health
- Precipitation Measurement and Analysis
- Calibration and Measurement Techniques
- Remote Sensing and LiDAR Applications
- Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Climate variability and models
- Satellite Image Processing and Photogrammetry
- Space exploration and regulation
- Remote Sensing and Land Use
- Geophysics and Gravity Measurements
- Hydrology and Drought Analysis
- Remote-Sensing Image Classification
- Space Exploration and Technology
- Landslides and related hazards
- Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
- Soil Moisture and Remote Sensing
- Spacecraft Design and Technology
- Fire effects on ecosystems
- Atmospheric Ozone and Climate
Marshall Space Flight Center
2015-2025
University of Alabama in Huntsville
2010-2022
Langley Research Center
2022
Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship
2022
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
2022
NOAA National Weather Service
2019-2022
Science Systems and Applications (United States)
2022
University of Oklahoma
2022
Colorado State University
2019
University of Alabama
2008-2013
Abstract. Thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing of land-surface temperature (LST) provides valuable information about the sub-surface moisture status required for estimating evapotranspiration (ET) and detecting onset severity drought. While empirical indices measuring anomalies in LST vegetation amount (e.g., as quantified by Normalized Difference Vegetation Index; NDVI) have demonstrated utility monitoring ET drought conditions over large areas, they may provide ambiguous results when...
NASA's Black Marble nighttime lights product suite (VNP46) is available at 500 m resolution since January 2012 with data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) onboard Suomi National Polar-orbiting Platform (SNPP). The retrieval algorithm, developed and implemented for routine global processing Land Science Investigator-led Processing System (SIPS), utilizes all high-quality, cloud-free, atmospheric-, terrain-, vegetation-, snow-, lunar-, stray...
A real-time understanding of the distribution and duration power outages after a major disaster is precursor to minimizing their harmful consequences. Here, we develop an approach for using daily satellite nighttime lights data create spatially disaggregated outage estimates, tracking electricity restoration efforts disasters strike. In contrast existing utility data, these estimates are independent, open, publicly-available, consistently measured across regions that may be serviced by...
Abstract. Drought in East Africa is a recurring phenomenon with significant humanitarian impacts. Given the steep climatic gradients, topographic contrasts, general data scarcity, and, places, political instability that characterize region, there need for spatially distributed, remotely derived monitoring systems to inform national and international drought response. At same time, very diversity scarcity necessitate remote also make it difficult evaluate reliability of these systems. Here we...
Abstract. Timely and accurate monitoring of disruptions to the electricity grid, including magnitude, spatial extent, timing, duration net power losses, is needed improve situational awareness disaster response long-term recovery efforts. Satellite-derived Nighttime Lights (NTL) provide an indication human activity patterns have been successfully used monitor disaster-related outages. The global 500 m resolution National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) Black Marble NTL daily standard...
Abstract An expanded “climatology” of U.S. tropical cyclone (TC) tornadoes covering the period 1950–2007 is presented. A major climatology published in 1991 included data on 626 TC tornadoes. Since then, almost 1200 more tornado records have been identified, with half that number from 2004–05 seasons alone. This work reexamines some findings previous studies, using a substantially larger database. The new analyses strongly support distinctions between inner- and outer-region tornadoes, which...
Abstract The increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters, driven by climate change anthropogenic activities, pose unprecedented challenges to emergency response agencies worldwide. Satellite remote sensing has become a critical tool for providing timely accurate data aid in disaster preparedness, response, recovery. This Commentary explores the role satellite managing climate‐driven highlighting use technologies such as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) creating damage proxy maps....
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is emerging as a valuable dataset for monitoring crops globally. Unlike optical remote sensing, SAR can provide earth observations regardless of solar illumination or atmospheric conditions. Several methods that utilize to identify agriculture rely on computationally expensive algorithms, such machine learning, require extensive training datasets, complex data pre-processing, specialized software. The coefficient variation (CV) method has been successful in...
Abstract The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) has been frequently used to map hail damage vegetation, especially in agricultural areas, but observations can be blocked by cloud cover during the growing season. Here, European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1A / 1B C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery co- and cross polarization is identify changes backscatter of corn soybeans damaged intense thunderstorm events early late Following a June event, hail-damaged areas produced lower...
Abstract. Thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing of land-surface temperature (LST) provides valuable information about the sub-surface moisture status required for estimating evapotranspiration (ET) and detecting onset severity drought. While empirical indices measuring anomalies in LST vegetation amount (e.g., as quantified by Normalized Difference Vegetation Index; NDVI) have demonstrated utility monitoring ET drought conditions over large areas, they may provide ambiguous results when...
The Greater Houston metropolitan area has experienced recurring flooding events in the past two decades related to tropical cyclones and heavy inland rainfall. With projected recurrence of severe weather events, an approach that outlines susceptibility different localities within study potential floods based on analyses impacts from earlier would be beneficial. We applied a novel C-band Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)-based flood detection method map floodwater distribution...
As defined in the United States by its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather Service (NWS), severe thunderstorms are those that produce either tornadoes of any duration intensity, hail with diameter excess 2.54 cm (1 in.), or winds 26 ms <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> (58 mph). These storms often heavy rains as individual events regional flooding if aggregated over multiple days similar events....
The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) is one of the most flood-prone regions in world, yet heavy cloud cover and limited in-situ observations have hampered efforts to monitor impact rainfall, flooding, inundation during severe weather events. This paper introduces HydroSAR, a Sentinel-1 SAR-based hazard monitoring service that was co-developed with in-region partners provide year-round, low-latency weather-hazards information across HKH. describes end-user focused concept overall design HydroSAR...
Abstract The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) began creating multispectral [i.e., red–green–blue (RGB)] composites in early 2000s with advent Meteosat-8 Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI). As new satellite sensors—for example, Himawari-8 Advanced Himawari (AHI) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite Baseline (ABI)—become available, there is a need to adjust EUMETSAT RGB standard thresholds (i.e., recipes)...
This paper describes a collaborative effort between the University of Alaska Fairbanks and NASA Short-term Prediction Research Transition Center (SPoRT) to expand use SAR in operational response weather-related hazards U.S. Work conducted within this includes (1) development SAR-derived value-added products that can be run fully-automatic production pipelines generate easy-to-understand hazard information layers; (2) design cloud-based delivery pipeline initiated by an end-user automatically...
Abstract. Drought in East Africa is a recurring phenomenon with significant humanitarian impacts. Given the steep climatic gradients, topographic contrasts, general data scarcity, and, places, political instability that characterize region, there need for spatially distributed, remotely derived monitoring systems to inform national and international drought response. At same time, very diversity scarcity necessitate remote also make it difficult evaluate reliability of these systems. Here we...
Abstract The catastrophic derecho that occurred on 10 August 2020 across the midwestern United States caused billions of dollars damage to both urban and rural infrastructure as well agricultural crops, most notably state Iowa. This paper documents complex evolution through use low-Earth-orbit passive-microwave imager GOES-16 satellite-derived products complemented by derived from NEXRAD weather radar observations. Additional satellite sensors including optical imagers synthetic aperture...
Abstract Severe weather events including tornadoes, damaging winds, hail, and their combination produce changes in land surface vegetation urban settings that are frequently observed through remote sensing. Capabilities continue to improve a growing constellation of governmental commercial assets, increasing the spatial resolution visible, near shortwave infrared, thermal infrared Here, we highlight cases where visual interpretation imagery benefitted severe damage assessments made within...
In response to Hurricane Florence of 2018, NASA JPL collected quad-pol L-band SAR data with the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) instrument, observing record-setting river stages across North and South Carolina. Fully-polarized images allow for mapping inundation extent at a high spatial resolution unique advantage over optical imaging, stemming from sensor’s ability penetrate cloud cover dense vegetation. This study used random forest classification generate maps...
This paper describes a collaborative effort between the University of Alaska Fairbanks and NASA Short-term Prediction Research Transition Center (SPoRT) to expand use SAR in operational response weather-related hazards U.S.Work described this includes short introduction developed SAR-based flood monitoring service with its technical implementation main hazard information products. We also present results from application systems two major recent events U.S. Specifically, will describe...
The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) is one of the most flood-prone regions in world, yet heavy cloud cover and limited situ observations have hampered efforts to monitor impact rainfall, flooding, inundation during severe weather events. This paper introduces HydroSAR, a Sentinel-1 SAR-based hazard monitoring service which was co-developed with in-region partners provide year-round, low-latency information across HKH. describes end user-focused concept overall design HydroSAR service. It main...
This paper describes the concepts and recent activities of HydroSAR project, a collaborative effort between University Alaska Fairbanks, NASA Goddard Marshall Space Flight Centers, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, focused on automatic production SAR-derived information for weather-related hazards. will introduce main processing algorithms as well broad product portfolio which includes surface water extent depth, in addition to capturing agriculture activity other event-related changes. We also...