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Land surface temperature and emissivity (LST&E) are key variables for a wide variety of surface–atmosphere studies, and it is very important to validate the accuracy of different LST&E retrieval algorithms. In this paper, the accuracy of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection (ASTER) temperature emissivity separation (TES) algorithm with the water vapor scaling (WVS) method and the ASTER standard LSE&E products (without WVS) was validated using 12 ASTER scenes from May 2012 to September 2012 with concurrent ground LST and emissivity measurements collected in an arid area in northwest China during the Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research experiment. Both the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and MOD07 atmospheric profile products were employed to perform the atmospheric correction. The results showed that the WVSTES LSTs retrieved from the two profiles both demonstrate good accuracies, with average biases of 0.34 and 0.24 K and average root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) of 1.52 and 1.46 K for the NCEP and MOD07 profiles, respectively. When the WVS was not applied, we obtained an average bias of 1.26 K and an average RMSE of 2.05 K for the AST08 product. The emissivities from the WVSTES algorithm with the two profiles both showed good agreements with the ground CE312 measurements, with mean differences of the five ASTER bands that were less than 0.01. AST05 showed anomalous emissivity spectra and underestimated the emissivity values of graybody surfaces when compared with the ground data, with mean differences of greater than 0.015, which were more obvious for cases with high water vapor. This paper demonstrated that the WVS method is critical for retrieving ASTER TES LST with accuracies within 1.5 K and emissivity within 0.015 for a wide range of atmospheric conditions and land surface types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-term historical aerosol optical depth (AOD) data set from 1982 to 2011 over China (15–45° N; 75–135° E) with 0.1 spatial resolution has been produced from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Pathfinder Atmospheres—Extended level-2B data. The spatial distribution pattern shows that high AOD values are found in central and eastern China over the entire period with AODs larger in summer and spring than in autumn and winter. As the high-quality products from AERONET were absent for this period over mainland China, AOD data obtained using the broadband extinction method from solar radiation stations have been used to verify the quality of the AVHRR AOD data set over China. The intercomparison results show that the interannual variation of AOD has been well captured in the variation curve of the AOD monthly mean and the variation trend is also consistent over the whole period. The correlation coefficient of the monthly mean is mostly larger than 0.55, the agreement index is larger than 0.57, and the relative error is less than 21%. Both AVHRR and visibility data sets show high values in regions with rapid economic development. Using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer AOD data as references, it is found that AVHRR AOD from this paper has better accuracy in general than that from Deep Blue (DB) algorithm over China, especially over eastern and southern China, while DB provides more coverage especially over bright surface such as northwest China. This long-term historic AOD data set can be used together with other AOD data sets to study the climate and environmental changes, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nominal grid data of geostationary remote sensing satellites are fundamental for generating the subsequent products. It can be obtained by normalized projection models, mainly based on the imaging mode. However, there are only definitions and primary descriptive equations for the normalized geostationary projection (NGP) model in the existing literature, while the corresponding imaging mode and the physical interpretation are missing, thus hindering the understanding of the produced nominal grid dataset as well as the subsequent products based on the grid. This paper first derived the imaging mode for NGP based on the limited literature. In addition, another new imaging mode was introduced and analyzed based on NGP. The corresponding projection model [nonstandard normalized geostationary projection (NNGP)] was proposed, which is entirely consistent with the situation of America’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series (GOES-R) and Chinese Fengyun-4A (FY-4A). Furthermore, this paper proposed a novel nominal projection model for frame imaging, which is consistent with the imaging mode of China’s Gaofen-4. Finally, extensive experiments were designed to comparatively analyze the three nominal grids and demonstrate a detailed difference. By providing a theoretical basis for nominal grid selection, this research is highly significant for the efficient near-real-time production and further applications of geostationary images, as well as the conversion between different datasets resulting from different nominal grid data. In addition, our models are sufficiently tested during the on-orbit running of FY-4A, the first satellite of China’s second-generation three-axis stabilized geostationary meteorological satellite series. The algorithms provide the technical support for the high-precision image navigation and registration and play a significant role in robustly producing the meteorological data with similar quality to those from GOES-R. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GaoFen1 is the first high-resolution earth observation satellite built in China, and carries four wide field-of-view (WFV) cameras to achieve large-scale monitoring and mapping. However, the unstable attitude measurement accuracy of the satellite generally imparts low geopositioning accuracy and inconsistent geometric error in overlapping areas of WFV images. A feasible and effective large-scale planar block adjustment (PBA) method is presented that corrects the geometric errors of the vast WFV images integrally, further improving the geometric accuracy of these images. In addition, whether ground control points (GCPs) are needed, and the effect of different numbers of GCPs on PBA accuracy is also investigated. Two key technologies are used in this paper. First, a universal PBA error equation based on the virtual control points is presented to allow PBA with or without GCPs. Second, an adjustment method aided by a digital elevation model is adopted to overcome the weak convergence geometry among WFV images, further ensuring stable estimation of PBA. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by 664 WFV images covering most of mainland China. The satisfactory experimental results indicate that the method presented herein is reasonable and effective, but that a certain number of GCPs is needed to ensure the accuracy of large-scale PBA results for WFV images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional remote sensing observation can only derive chlorophyll-a concentration in surface water (Chlasurf), which is insufficient for water quality monitoring or biogeochemical applications. In this paper, a column-integrated biomass (CIB) estimation algorithm was established in Lake Dianchi, China, and the CIB was estimated by Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI) data from 2016 to 2018. First, the results show that the method is applicable to CIB estimation in nonbloom conditions [mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) = 10.55%, mean ratio (MR) = 0.996]. On the one hand, Chlasurf could be estimated using a universal model of Chla (UMOC) estimation for case-II waters; on the other hand, CIB could be obtained from Chlasurf according to the linear relationship between the Chlasurf and CIB. Second, both the spatial and temporal variabilities of Chlasurf are larger than those of CIB, which indicates that the biomass of the whole lake is relatively stable from day to day. During algal bloom periods, the CIB at nonbloom areas tends to decrease, suggesting that algae from nonbloom regions have migrated to bloom regions. Third, wind speed (WS) is the most critical meteorological factor affecting the water surface biomass, compared with other parameters. The average percentage of surface-to-total biomass in nonbloom conditions is about 7% when the WS is less than 2 m/s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the rapid urbanization of China, many villages in the urban fringe are enveloped by ever-expanding cities and become so-called urban villages (UVs) with substandard living conditions. Despite physical similarities to informal settlements in other countries (e.g., slums in India), UVs have access to basic public services, and more importantly, villagers own the land legitimately. The resulting socio-economic impact on urban development attracts increasing interest. However, the identification of UVs in previous studies relies on fieldwork, leading to late and incomplete analyses. In this paper, we present three scene-based methods for detecting UVs using high-resolution remotely sensed imagery based on a novel multi-index scene model and two popular scene models, i.e., bag-of-visual-words and supervised latent Dirichlet allocation. In the experiments, our index-based approach produced Kappa values around 0.82 and outperformed conventional models both quantitatively and visually. Moreover, we performed multitemporal classification to evaluate the transferability of training samples across multitemporal images with respect to three methods, and the index-based approach yielded best results again. Finally, using the detection results, we conducted a systematic spatiotemporal analysis of UVs in Shenzhen and Wuhan, two mega cities of China. At the city level, we observe the decline of UVs in urban areas over the recent years. At the block level, we characterize UVs quantitatively from physical and geometrical perspectives and investigate the relationships between UVs and other geographic features. In both levels, the comparison between UVs in Shenzhen and Wuhan is made, and the variations within and across cities are revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ziyuan1-02C (ZY1-02C) was launched on December 22, 2011, and it is the first civilian high-resolution remote sensing satellite in China. However, the limited precision of the onboard attitude measurement system causes many errors during attitude transfer by ZY1-02C. Thus, there are complex distortions in the images obtained by ZY1-02C, which restricts its application greatly. In this paper, we consider the feasibility of attitude error correction based on parallel observations with high-resolution cameras, and the method is described in detail. To validate the efficiency of the proposed method, several images and corresponding control data were collected from the Henan, Taihang Mountain, Neimeng, and Taiyuan areas in China. The experimental results indicate that seamless mosaic images without distortion can be obtained using our method. Furthermore, the positioning accuracy with a few ground control points (GCPs) was shown to be better than 1.5 pixels and equivalent to the accuracy of the GCPs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China is the largest coal consumer in the world. The massive exploitation and utilization of coal resources have resulted in serious problems of heavy metal pollution and environmental contamination, such as soil degradation, water pollution, crop damage, and even threatening human lives. Therefore, monitoring soil heavy metal pollution quickly and in real time is an urgent task at present. This research not only formulated a new preprocessing method enlightened by few-shot learning for soil hyperspectral data but also combined it with other soil-related auxiliary information to extract effective information from the soil hyperspectrum, at the end of which different regression methods were adopted to predict soil heavy metal contamination. This test used 168 actual soil samples from the Eastern Junggar coalfield in Xinjiang for verification. Since copper in the soil is a trace element and the corresponding spectral characteristics are affected by other impurities, improper use of hyperspectral preprocessing methods may introduce interference information or may delete useful information, which makes the model effect unsatisfied. To effectively address the above-mentioned problems, the preprocessing method of this experiment combined the second-order differential derivation, and the data enhancement (DA) method together with the addition of auxiliary information to allow more effective features to be entered into the model. Next, the attentive interpretable tabular learning (TabNet) model was improved in three different ways using the original TabNet model and three improved TabNet models to create regression models. One of the improved TabNet models had the best effect, with a list of the top 30 features according to the degree of importance. Meanwhile, the regression prediction of Cu content using four different convolutional neural networks (CNNs) revealed that the model with the residual block was the strongest and slightly outperformed the improved TabNet model, but lacked interpretation of the input data. Besides, this experiment also employed different preprocessing methods for regression prediction on various models and found that the traditional preprocessing methods performed best in traditional regression models [e.g., partial least square regression (PLSR)] and underperformed in deep learning models. The selected optimal model was compared with PLSR and CNN models. The results indicated that both the improved TabNet model and the improved CNN model had better performance using the new preprocessing approach proposed in this article, with improved TabNet yielding a coefficient of determination ($\text{R}^{2}$), root-mean-square error (RMSE), and the ratio of performance to interquartile range (RPIQ) of 0.94, 1.341, and 4.474, respectively. The improved CNN model had a coefficient of determination of 0.942, an RMSE of 1.324, and an interquartile range of 4.531 in the test dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuously monitoring surface ozone (O3) spatial distribution and forecasting its variations are beneficial to improving air quality and ensuring public health in China, although achieving this goal faces challenges from currently available observations and retrieval techniques. Hence, we introduce a coupled surface O3 estimation framework (LESO) to address these challenges by integrating ground-level observing networks and satellite remote sensing. LESO features easy-to-use deep learning algorithms, independence on chemical transportation models (CTMs), and consistent performance using data from different satellites. LESO includes a deep forest 21 (DF21) model to interpolate O3 concentration by learning spatial patterns and a long short-term memory (LSTM) model to forecast O3 concentration by learning data from the past. We used sites of city-level in situ networks as the control sites to manifest short-distance O3 transportation. Satellite-based observations of O3 precursor indicators were incorporated to capture O3 photochemical reactions. DF21 explained a larger fraction of O3 variability (90%) with a mean bias error (MBE) of smaller than $1~\mu \text {g/m}^{3}$. We also investigated the impact of the number of training sites on the DF21 performance, which suggested that five training sites could ensure a good DF21 performance for the most areas ($R^{2} > 0.85$ and bias $< 2~\mu \text {g/m}^{3}$). The forecast O3 concentration via LSTM showed a good and stable agreement ($R^{2}\approx 0.85$ and bias $< 5~\mu \text {g/m}^{3}$) with ground-based measurements for 8-, 24-, 28-, and 72-h time periods, respectively. Overall, LESO aims to bring convenient functionality and reliable surface O3 estimates for broad users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional magnetotelluric (MT) impedance estimations are based on Fourier theory and carried out in the frequency domain, which has a strict stationarity requirement for the analyzed signal. However, the stationarity assumption cannot be satisfied when the data possess a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and/or a short observation period. These shortcomings can cause significant errors in the MT impedance estimations, especially in the low-to-medium frequency bands. The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMMs) and polarization analysis of the electromagnetic signal can be attached to the time-domain MT impedance estimation to address these shortcomings. This time-domain technique calculates the impedance in the time domain without Fourier transformation, and the ADMM and polarization analysis are applied to further improve the stability and convergence of the impedance estimation. Here, we present an ADMM-based method for MT impedance estimations (ADMM-MT). Various noise are added to a noise-free MT signal to test the performance of ADMM-MT. The results show that ADMM-MT yields impedance estimates with relative recovery errors below 0.2, even when the SNR of the data is 0 dB and the observation period is 60 min. We then apply ADMM-MT to field data in Inner Mongolia, China. The results indicate that the apparent resistivity curves obtained by ADMM-MT using a short time series are smooth over the 0.001–1-Hz band, which is consistent with the remote reference (RR) processing results obtained using a long time series. In contrast, the curves obtained by traditional robust estimation method are strongly biased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the continuous intensification of human activities in the ocean, the frequent outbreaks of red tide have caused great harm to the marine environment and ecology. Thus, the rapid detection and monitoring of red tide become particularly important. At present, the main monitoring methods depend on artificial and buoy data, as well as optical satellite remote sensing. However, these methods may not be able to effectively deal with the characteristics of red tide bloom, such as suddenness and unpredictability. The global navigation satellite system-reflectometry (GNSS-R) is an emerging technology that makes use of navigation signals as a remote sensing opportunity to obtain Earth surface information. GNSS-R has already been proved to be capable of retrieving sea surface parameters (e.g., dielectric constant and sea surface roughness) closely related to the outbreak of a red tide. In this article, we proposed a new method to estimate red tide density, which utilizes an all-new model associating GNSS-R observations with sea surface red tide density. This method can remove the weather influence and greatly decrease the revisit period, which is much longer for optical red tide remote sensing methods. The Landsat-8 near-infrared data and TechDemoSat-1 (TDS-1) GNSS-R data of a red tide outbreak in the sea off the Tsingtao coast in China are used to build and test the proposed method. The results demonstrate that the correlation coefficient is 0.73, and the root mean square error of retrieved red tide density is 2.84%, which shows that the GNSS-R technology shows great potential to perform the rapid and preliminary red tide monitoring and judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface monitoring of microseismic monitoring events is generally challenging because microseismic data have a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Traditional event-detection methods struggle to detect weak microseismic events. A variance fractal dimension (VFD) method for automatic microseismic event detection via multitrace energy envelope stacking (MTEES) is introduced. In the first stage, we propose a processing microseismic data method based on the MTEES method. It increases the energy of weak microseismic data to avoid missed and false microseismic detection. Furthermore, it can greatly improve computational efficiency to satisfy real-time processing requirements. In the second stage, the VFD algorithm is applied to the data processed in the first stage to improve the feasibility and validity of microseismic event detection. A simulation test with perforation data shows the reliability of the new method in the automatic detection of microseismic events. In addition, we demonstrate that analogous results can be obtained when perforation data are not available by introducing a novel approach based on synthetic correction time. The new approach is particularly useful when perforation data are not recorded, representing a significant advantage over previous approaches. We describe the application of the novel method to a real microseismic data example from monitoring hydraulic fracture treatments in Shanxi Province, China, with and without perforation data. The new method yields improvement in microseismic event detection for microseismic monitoring. Therefore, we find a wide range of applications requiring analysis of microseismic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperspectral image (HSI) change detection aims to identify the differences in multitemporal HSIs. Recently, a graph convolutional network (GCN) has attracted increasing attention in the field of remote sensing due to its advantages in processing irregular data. In comparison with a convolutional neural network (CNN) that can only perform convolution operations on data with the assumption of the Euclidean structure, GCN adopts a graph structure to flexibly capture the characteristics and structure information of non-Euclidean data. In this article, we propose a novel dual-branch difference amplification GCN (D2AGCN) for HSI change detection with limited samples, which allows the network to fully extract and effectively amplify the difference features of multitemporal HSIs for change detection. The dual-branch structure can effectively extract sufficient different features to facilitate the detection of the changed areas. As far as we know, this is the first time that GCN has been introduced into HSI change detection. A difference magnification module is designed to suppress similar regions and highlight the feature differences between the multitemporal HSIs in the dual-branch structure, which increases the distinction between change and nonchange classes. The visual and quantitative experimental results on three real hyperspectral datasets (i.e., China, Bay Area, and Santa Barbara) show that the proposed D2AGCN outperforms most of the state-of-the-art methods in HSI change detection with limited training samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ZY1-02D satellite, which was launched in 2019, is China’s first civil hyperspectral satellite. However, the laboratory calibration and vicarious calibration methods could not provide accurate radiometric calibration coefficients after the satellite had been launched. In this article, we describe how a cross-calibration method was utilized to calibrate the ZY1-02D hyperspectral imager using the well-calibrated Gaofen-5 Advanced Hyperspectral Imager (GF-5 AHSI). The 6S radiative transfer model was selected to simulate the apparent reflectance of the two hyperspectral sensors under corresponding imaging conditions, and the calibration coefficients were calculated by spectral channel matching. The reflectance-based vicarious calibration was carried out for comparison. Through the validation experiments, it is shown that the reflectance data obtained by cross-calibration and vicarious calibration are basically consistent, showing a stable radiation performance. At the Dunhuang calibration site, the ratio of measured surface reflectance to the cross-calibrated image reflectance is between 0.9 and 1.1, the $R^{2}$ values are more than 0.96, and the spectral angles are less than 3°. The validation results for different ground features also show the applicability of the corrected coefficients. When compared with different sensors, the maximum difference between the ZY1-02D reflectance results after cross-calibration and Landsat-8/Sentinel-2 is less than 0.04 and the mean difference is less than 0.02, which further proves that the ZY1-02D hyperspectral imager has a high radiation accuracy after cross-calibration. The proposed cross-calibration method could be used as an effective supplement to the on-orbit calibration method and could also be extended to other satellite hyperspectral imagers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors, such as Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) and Sentinel-1, provide significant opportunities for soil moisture content (SMC) retrieval with relatively high spatial resolutions (10~30 m). In this work, an artificial neural network (ANN) SMC retrieval algorithm combined with the water cloud model, the advanced integral equation model, and the Oh model database was proposed. The SAR copolarization backscatter, the local incidence angle (LIA), and the normalized difference vegetation index were used in input vectors for the ANN algorithm for the retrieval and mapping of the ALOS-2 and Sentinel-1 SMC at a 30-m resolution. The results of the comparison between the SMC retrievals and the measured SMC show that Sentinel-1 and ALOS-2 SMC retrievals with high accuracy correspond to low-vegetation areas (crop, grass, and shrub), with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.021 and 0.033 cm3/cm3, respectively. ALOS-2 SMC retrievals provide higher accuracy (RMSE = 0.076 cm3/cm3) than Sentinel-1 SMC retrievals at high vegetation (e.g., forest). However, it remains challenging for soil moisture retrieval in forest land. The C-band and L-band SMC retrievals have higher RMSE (up to 0.047 cm3/cm3) at low incidence angle (<20°) and high incidence angle (>50°). In addition, by considering the impact of rainfall on the SMC, it appears that the Sentinel-1 and ALOS-2 SMC have a good response to the rainfall events. Finally, the results of the comparison between the SMC retrievals and the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) L2 SMC product show that the correlation coefficients between Sentinel-1, ALOS-2, and SMAP are higher in September when the vegetation is drying than in July when the vegetation is growing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variable atmospheric conditions are typically ignored in the retrieval of geophysical parameters of the Earth’s surface when using spaceborne passive microwave observations. However, high frequencies, for example, 91.7 GHz, are sensitive to variable atmospheric absorption, even in winter’s dry conditions. In this article, the influence of variable atmospheric absorption on snow cover extent (SCE) mapping was quantitatively investigated. A physical method was derived to enable atmospheric correction for variable atmospheric conditions. The total column precipitable water vapor (TPWV) from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) was parametrized into transmittances in this correction method. The corrected brightness temperature at 19 and 91.7 GHz from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS) was applied to the threshold algorithm for snow mapping over China. Compared with the Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS) data in winter from 2012 to 2013, for Qinghai–Tibet plateau (QTP), a significant improvement after correction was obtained from February to March over ephemeral and shallow snow, where the largest daily improvement of accuracy is up to 20%. The accuracy (incl. precision, recall, and F1 index) improved on average is from 0.77 (0.60, 0.68, and 0.63) to 0.79 (0.69, 0.7, and 0.68) over the full winter time from December to March. Over forest-rich Northeast China, where snow in winter is thicker, small improvement was observed at the onset of the snow season and over snow margin area. It was evidenced that high frequency is a promising way of snow cover mapping with the proposed atmospheric correction method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tropical cyclone (TC) intensity estimation is an important task in meteorological research. Meanwhile, TC intensity estimation performance can be improved by developing advanced machine learning techniques using the newly emerged high-quality multispectral images (MSIs) acquired by FY-4 meteorological satellite of China. To this end, this article proposes a novel model, tensor-based convolutional neural network (TCNN). Not only being a deep network entirely formulated in tensor algebra, but TCNN also establishes the mathematical connections between tensor decomposition and CNN operations with tensor contraction. Moreover, TCNN adopts a multitask structure, which consists of a classification network for intensity categorization and a regression network for wind speed estimation. It allows the regression network to leverage the outcome of the classification network, thus ensuring intensity estimation accuracy. In addition, two alternative TCNN models, coupled TCNN (C-TCNN) and Tucker TCNN (T-TCNN), are designed to automatically deal with invalid band data in the FY-4 MSIs, which has been a practical issue with the data. Experimental results prove that the proposed network is accurate and functional. They also demonstrate the advantages of TCNN over other TC intensity estimation methods, showing that C-TCNN and T-TCNN outperform several classic models and the state-of-the-art models based on CNN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Model-based incoherent polarimetric decomposition is a frequently used technique to analyze multilook data of polarimetric synthetic aperture radars (POLSARs). The purpose of this study is to analyze and compare different model-based incoherent polarimetric decomposition algorithms from the polarimetric information change aspect. For the input of a model-based incoherent polarimetric decomposition algorithm, polarimetric entropy was used to represent the polarimetric information of a coherency matrix. For the output of a model-based incoherent polarimetric decomposition algorithm, there are usually several decomposed components. To quantitatively represent their total polarimetric information, a new concept, generalized polarimetric entropy, was proposed which generalized the concept of polarimetric entropy based on the information entropy additivity of information theory. Generalized polarimetric entropy consists of two parts named as polarimetric power entropy and polarimetric residual entropy, respectively. Polarimetric power entropy describes the distribution status of the Span values of all decomposed components. Polarimetric residual entropy represents the residual randomness of all decomposed components. With the three new concepts, eight model-based incoherent polarimetric decomposition algorithms were compared and analyzed. Two real POLSAR images, respectively, derived by the E-SAR airborne system of Germany and the GF-3 satellite of China were used for the experiments. Experimental results had illustrated several useful conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, as part of an effort to study snowfall characteristics and quantify winter precipitation in East China, we investigated the microphysical properties of snowfall, including size, shape, density, and terminal velocity using a 2-D video disdrometer (2-DVD) and a weighing precipitation gauge in Nanjing (NJ), East China during the winters of 2015–2019. We obtained larger snow density and terminal velocity values than those reported in the literature for this region. Higher snow density could account for higher snowflake terminal velocity, after removing the effects of observation altitude and surface temperature. We then fit the snow particle size distributions (PSDs) to the gamma model and explored the interrelationships among the model parameters and snowfall rate (SR). The relationship between radar reflectivity factor ($Z_{e}$) and SR was derived based on snow PSD measurements and the snow density relation. Using this $Z_{e}-\mathrm {SR}$ relationship, the estimated liquid-equivalent SRs are obtained from S-band NJ radar data collected during several snowfall events. Radar-inferred SRs showed reasonable agreement with those measured on the ground, with a mean absolute error of 16% for the collected snowfall events in NJ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phytoplankton carbon, an important biogeochemical and ecological parameter, plays a critical role in the carbon cycle and in global warming reduction. Estimation of phytoplankton carbon in inland waters on a large scale using remote sensing is useful for understanding, evaluating, and monitoring the carbon dynamics, and, in particular, for determining the spatial–temporal variation of primary production in inland waters. In a correlation analysis of the phytoplankton carbon concentration and water components, the result revealed no significant correlation between the chlorophyll-a concentration and phytoplankton carbon concentration in inland waters. However, the absorption peak height of particles at 675 nm, which is defined as the absorption at 675 nm subtracted by that at 660 nm, was found to be closely correlated with the phytoplankton carbon concentration. Thus, the absorption peak height of particles at 675 nm could be used as an indicator of the phytoplankton carbon concentration. A semianalytical method based on the remote-sensing reflectance in Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI) bands 8, 9, and 17 was developed to derive the absorption peak of particles at a wavelength of 675 nm. Finally, an algorithm for estimating the phytoplankton carbon concentration in inland waters using OLCI bands 8, 9, and 17 was constructed. From 2013 to 2018, eight field campaigns were conducted in inland lakes in different seasons, and the optical properties, optically active water components, and phytoplankton carbon concentrations were obtained. An assessment of its accuracy using an independent data set demonstrated that the algorithm performance is acceptable (mean absolute percentage error, 48.6%, and root mean square error, 0.36 mg/L). As a demonstration, the algorithm was successfully applied to map the phytoplankton carbon concentration in Taihu Lake and Chaohu Lake, China, using OLCI images acquired on December 5, 2017, and August 5, 2018 and December 8, 2017, and August 7, 2017, and the spatial variation of the phytoplankton carbon concentration in Taihu Lake and Chaohu Lake was thoroughly examined. A semianalytical remote-sensing method, instead of a traditional time-consuming approach, was developed in this article, which can be used to estimate phytoplankton carbon concentration quickly, and provides an effective way to map the phytoplankton carbon concentration in inland water on a large scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various drought indices are developed to monitor drought conditions. Each drought index applies to specific environments given its own characteristics. This article aims to compare the drought conditions of continental China detected by remote sensing. We compare diverse types of remote sensing-based indices for studying drought situation in 2017. The Station-based precipitation data with different scales are used to evaluate drought phenomena. The drought indices compared in this article include the precipitation condition index (PCI) derived from tropical rainfall measuring mission data, vegetation condition index (VCI), temperature condition index (TCI) derived from moderate-resolution imaging spectra-radiometer (MODIS) data, and other integrated drought indices, which combine VCI, TCI, and PCI. Vegetation health index (VHI), scaled drought condition index (SDCI), and synthesized drought index (SDI) constitute the integrated drought indices. The results indicate that numerous indices have different applicability across continental China. VHI has the optimal correlation with short-term and long-term precipitation. The SDI, SDCI, VCI, TCI, and temperature–vegetation dryness index (TVDI) are also reliable for monitoring drought conditions and are more suitable for long-term than short-term precipitation. Furthermore, combined indices (VHI, SDI, and SDCI) perform better than single drought indices (PCI, TCI, and VCI). VHI, SDI, and SDCI did not show good consistency in croplands when monitoring agricultural drought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the above paper , the name of the institution of the authors Dandan Zhi, Tanqi Yu, and Yan Pan were incorrect, they are with the Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Key Laboratory of Optical Calibration and Characterization, Hefei 230031, China, and also with the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China (e-mail: 1416652331@qq.com). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we propose a polarimetric calibration (PolCal) algorithm to estimate the system crosstalk, cross-polarization (x-pol), and co-polarization (co-pol) channel imbalance (CI) when ground corner reflectors (CRs) are unavailable. The current PolCal process requires at least one trihedral CR to determine the co-pol CI. However, the deployment of ground CRs is costly and may even be impossible in some areas. To calibrate a polarimetric image without CRs, our proposed method automatically extracts the volume-dominated and Bragg-like pixels as a reference to estimate the crosstalk, x-pol, and co-pol CI values. Then, a first-order polynomial model is exploited to fit the co-pol CI to further improve calibration accuracy. In the experimental section, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method with data from two of China’s newly developed very high-resolution systems. The experiments confirmed that the proposed workflow can be considered as a feasible calibration scheme when the ground deployment of CRs is impossible, and it is also an effective analysis tool for the assessment of calibrated products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) is a new-generation polar-orbiting satellite imaging sensor. It has generated a variety of operational products similar to the widely used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products. However, there are high uncertainties in official VIIRS aerosol products based on our previous validations, and a reduction in these uncertainties is needed before they can be used with confidence. To this end, we developed a revised high-spatial-resolution aerosol retrieval algorithm which can considerably improve the aerosol optical depth (AOD) estimations. The improvements mainly arise from: 1) correction of the surface bidirectional reflectance using the RossThick-LiSparse model with parameters obtained from the MODIS bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF)/Albedo products; 2) finer customized monthly aerosol types assumed from the historical Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) measurements of optical properties; and 3) improved cloud screening with the revised dynamic threshold cloud detection algorithm. The new 750-m AOD retrievals are validated against AERONET AOD measurements and compared with the official VIIRS AOD products from 2014 to 2017 over the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region in China. The results illustrated that the retrievals are highly consistent with ground measurements ($R = 0.926$), with ~72% of them falling within the expected error of [±(0.05 + 20%)] on a regional scale. The mean absolute error is 0.082 and the root-mean-square error is 0.120. The new algorithm can significantly reduce the overestimations and improve the aerosol estimations over heterogeneous urban surfaces compared to the official aerosol products, especially in winter. This new VIIRS AOD product will thus be more useful for air pollution studies over medium- or small-scale areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]