Instantaneous rainfall estimation using neural network from multispectral observations of SEVIRI radiometer and its application in estimation of daily and monthly rainfall

In the present paper, an artificial neural network (ANN) based technique has been developed to estimate instantaneous rainfall by using brightness temperature from the IR sensors of SEVIRI radiometer, onboard Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite. The study is carried out over north of Algeria. For estimation of rainfall, weight matrices of two ANNs namely MLP1 and MLP2 are developed. MLP1 is to identify raining or non-raining pixels. When rainy pixels are identified, then for those pixels, instantaneous rainfall is estimated by using MLP2. For identification of raining and non raining pixels, 7 input parameters from the IR sensors are utilized. Corresponding data of raining/non-raining pixels are taken from radar. For instantaneous rainfall estimation, 14 input parameters are utilized, where 7 parameters are information about raining pixels and 7 parameters are related with cloud features. The results obtained show the neural network performs reasonably well.     

Determining the precipitable water vapor thresholds under different rainfall strengths in Taiwan

Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) plays an important role for weather forecasting. It is helpful in evaluating the changes of the weather system via observing the distribution of water vapor. The ability of calculating PWV from Global Positioning System (GPS) signals is useful to understand the special weather phenomenon. In this study, 95 ground-based GPS and rainfall stations in Taiwan were utilized from 2006 to 2012 to analyze the relationship between PWV and rainfall. The PWV data were classified into four classes (no, light, moderate and heavy rainfall), and the vertical gradients of the PWV were obtained and the variations of the PWV were analyzed. The results indicated that as the GPS elevation increased every 100?m, the PWV values decreased by 9.5?mm, 11.0?mm, 12.2?mm and 12.3?mm during the no, light, moderate and heavy rainfall conditions, respectively. After applying correction using the vertical gradients mentioned above, the average PWV thresholds were 41.8?mm, 52.9?mm, 62.5?mm and 64.4?mm under the no, light, moderate and heavy rainfall conditions, respectively. This study offers another type of empirical threshold to assist the rainfall prediction and can be used to distinguish the rainfall features between different areas in Taiwan.     

The impact of different background errors in the assimilation of satellite radiances and in-situ observational data using WRFDA for three rainfall events over Iran

Satellite radiances and in-situ observations are assimilated through Weather Research and Forecasting Data Assimilation (WRFDA) system into Advanced Research WRF (ARW) model over Iran and its neighboring area. Domain specific background error based on x and y components of wind speed (UV) control variables is calculated for WRFDA system and some sensitivity experiments are carried out to compare the impact of global background error and the domain specific background errors, both on the precipitation and 2-m temperature forecasts over Iran. Three precipitation events that occurred over the country during January, September and October 2014 are simulated in three different experiments and the results for precipitation and 2-m temperature are verified against the verifying surface observations. Results show that using domain specific background error improves 2-m temperature and 24-h accumulated precipitation forecasts consistently, while global background error may even degrade the forecasts compared to the experiments without data assimilation. The improvement in 2-m temperature is more evident during the first forecast hours and decreases significantly as the forecast length increases.     

Generation of satellite tracking profile: Problems and validation algorithms

Recently, as a satellite mission becomes complicated, it has been required to generate the schedule of satellite antenna movements automatically without relying upon operator’s ad hoc knowledge. To generate the satellite antenna schedule autonomously, this paper first addresses geometrical problems associated with the antenna scheduling and mission planning problems that can be formulated from satellite navigation and antenna orientation information. Then, based on the solutions of the geometrical problems, a set of antenna azimuth and elevation angles that enables the antenna to point towards the desired ground station is obtained systematically. Using the computed azimuth and elevation angles, the satellite tracking profile (TP) is generated, and to validate it, TP validation algorithms are developed.     

0 °C isotherm height for satellite communication in Malaysia

The 0 °C isotherm height is an important parameter for prediction of rain attenuation of microwave and millimeter wave for Earth-space communication. The variations of 0 °C isotherm heights for two monsoon seasons have been studied based on an analysis of radiosonde over three stations. The exceedence probability statistics of rain height are compared between the two seasons. The results on the 0 °C isotherm height can be utilized for the estimation of attenuation of microwave and millimeter wave due to rain over Earth-space paths. Attenuations of radio wave due to rain at frequencies above 10 GHz and above have also been estimated using the 0 °C isotherm height so derived.     

Remote sensing and GIS-based landslide hazard analysis and cross-validation using multivariate logistic regression model on three test areas in Malaysia

This paper presents the results of the cross-validation of a multivariate logistic regression model using remote sensing data and GIS for landslide hazard analysis on the Penang, Cameron, and Selangor areas in Malaysia. Landslide locations in the study areas were identified by interpreting aerial photographs and satellite images, supported by field surveys. SPOT 5 and Landsat TM satellite imagery were used to map landcover and vegetation index, respectively. Maps of topography, soil type, lineaments and land cover were constructed from the spatial datasets. Ten factors which influence landslide occurrence, i.e., slope, aspect, curvature, distance from drainage, lithology, distance from lineaments, soil type, landcover, rainfall precipitation, and normalized difference vegetation index (ndvi), were extracted from the spatial database and the logistic regression coefficient of each factor was computed. Then the landslide hazard was analysed using the multivariate logistic regression coefficients derived not only from the data for the respective area but also using the logistic regression coefficients calculated from each of the other two areas (nine hazard maps in all) as a cross-validation of the model. For verification of the model, the results of the analyses were then compared with the field-verified landslide locations. Among the three cases of the application of logistic regression coefficient in the same study area, the case of Selangor based on the Selangor logistic regression coefficients showed the highest accuracy (94%), where as Penang based on the Penang coefficients showed the lowest accuracy (86%). Similarly, among the six cases from the cross application of logistic regression coefficient in other two areas, the case of Selangor based on logistic coefficient of Cameron showed highest (90%) prediction accuracy where as the case of Penang based on the Selangor logistic regression coefficients showed the lowest accuracy (79%). Qualitatively, the cross application model yields reasonable results which can be used for preliminary landslide hazard mapping.     

Image restoration of the asymmetric point spread function of a high-resolution remote sensing satellite with time-delayed integration

The calibration and validation team of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute has calibrated and validated the image data of the KOMPSAT-2 since the launch of KOMPSAT-2 on July 28, 2006. The asymmetric phenomenon of the point spread function of the KOMPSAT-2 image data is evident in both the along and the across direction, most likely because KOMPSAT-2 has a 1 m ground sample distance high-resolution camera with time-delayed integration. Furthermore, because KOMPSAT-2 is in space, the KOMPSAT-2 image data has been corrected with good results by means of modulation transfer function compensation.     

Towards validation of SCIAMACHY lunar occultation NO2 vertical profiles

Vertical profiles of stratospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) have been retrieved from moderate resolution lunar occultation transmission spectra measured by Scanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY) on board the European Environmental Satellite (ENVISAT). These measurements were taken over the high southern latitude of 50°–90° during the period of 2003–2005. To assess the accuracy of the retrieved NO₂ profiles, the SCIAMACHY nighttime NO₂ profiles were compared with NO₂ profiles retrieved from sunrise solar occultation spectra measured by the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) and the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiments II (SAGE II) using a photochemical correction model. The validation results show good agreement of SCIAMACHY lunar occultation NO₂ with scaled HALOE and SAGE II profiles. The relative mean differences (rmd) with scaled HALOE profiles are within −13% to +5% and standard deviations (rms) of the relative differences are within 3–19% between 25 and 38 km. The rmd and rms with scaled SAGE II NO₂ profiles are in the range of −9 to +7 and 10–17% respectively between 22 and 39 km.     

Precision analysis of autonomous orbit determination using star sensor for Beidou MEO satellite

This paper focuses on the autonomous orbit determination accuracy of Beidou MEO satellite using the onboard observations of the star sensors and infrared horizon sensor. A polynomial fitting method is proposed to calibrate the periodic error in the observation of the infrared horizon sensor, which will greatly influence the accuracy of autonomous orbit determination. Test results show that the periodic error can be eliminated using the polynomial fitting method. The User Range Error (URE) of Beidou MEO satellite is less than 2?km using the observations of the star sensors and infrared horizon sensor for autonomous orbit determination. The error of the Right Ascension of Ascending Node (RAAN) is less than 60?$\mathrm{\mu }\text{rad}$ and the observations of star sensors can be used as a spatial basis for Beidou MEO navigation constellation.     

X-ray pulsar-based navigation system with the errors in the planetary ephemerides for Earth-orbiting satellite

The objective of this paper is to investigate and reduce the impact of the errors in the planetary ephemerides on X-ray pulsar-based navigation system for Earth-orbiting satellite. Expressions of the system biases caused by the errors in the planetary ephemerides are derived. The result of investigation has shown that the impact of the error in Earth’s ephemeris is must greater than the errors in the other ephemerides and would greatly degrade the performance of X-ray pulsar-based navigation system. Moreover, the system bias is modeled as a slowly time-varying process, and is handled by including it as a part of navigation state vector. It has been demonstrated that the proposed navigation system is completely observable, and some simulations are performed to verify its feasibility.     

A new stochastic model considering satellite clock interpolation errors in precise point positioning

Precise clock products are typically interpolated based on the sampling interval of the observational data when they are used for in precise point positioning. However, due to the occurrence of white noise in atomic clocks, a residual component of such noise will inevitable reside within the observations when clock errors are interpolated, and such noise will affect the resolution of the positioning results. In this paper, which is based on a twenty-one-week analysis of the atomic clock noise characteristics of numerous satellites, a new stochastic observation model that considers satellite clock interpolation errors is proposed. First, the systematic error of each satellite in the IGR clock product was extracted using a wavelet de-noising method to obtain the empirical characteristics of atomic clock noise within each clock product. Then, based on those empirical characteristics, a stochastic observation model was structured that considered the satellite clock interpolation errors. Subsequently, the IGR and IGS clock products at different time intervals were used for experimental validation. A verification using 179 stations worldwide from the IGS showed that, compared with the conventional model, the convergence times using the stochastic model proposed in this study were respectively shortened by 4.8% and 4.0% when the IGR and IGS 300-s-interval clock products were used and by 19.1% and 19.4% when the 900-s-interval clock products were used. Furthermore, the disturbances during the initial phase of the calculation were also effectively improved.     

Spatial and temporal monitoring of drought conditions using the satellite rainfall estimates and remote sensing optical and thermal measurements

Drought is an important natural disaster that causes devastating impacts on the ecosystem, livestock, environment, and society. So far, various remote-sensing methods have been developed to estimate drought conditions, each of which has advantages and restrictions. This study aims to monitor the real-time drought indices at the field scales via the integration of various earth observations. Our proposed method consists of two steps. In the first step, the relationships between long-term standardized precipitation indices (SPI) derived from PERSIANN-CDR rainfall data and two drought-dependent parameters derived from MODIS products, including normalized NDVI and soil-air temperature gradient, are obtained at the spatial resolution of PERSIANN-CDR grid (approximately 25 km). As the next step, the corresponding relationships are applied to estimate the drought index maps at the spatial resolution of MODIS products (1 km). Numerous analyses are carried out to evaluate the proposed method. The results revealed that, from various drought indices, including SPIs of different timescales (1, 3, 6, and 12-months), SPI-3 and SPI-6 are more appropriate to the proposed method in terms of correlation with temperature and vegetation parameters. The findings also demonstrate the competency of the proposed method in estimating SPI indices with average RMSE 0.67 and the average correlation coefficient of 0.74.     

Variability and climatology of precipitable water vapor from 12-year GPS observations in Taiwan

Because of global warming, global sea levels have risen, the frequency of drought in Taiwan is much more frequent in winter and spring, and rainfall tends to concentrate in summer. The probability of disaster-type weather has also increased significantly. Estimating precipitable water vapor (PWV) through GPS signals, related studies and analyses of weather conditions, and the effective use of meteorological forecasts have been valued by many meteorological research organizations and officials. In this study, PWV data from 2006 to 2017 and rainfall data were used for long-term harmonic analysis. PWV data calculated by ECMWF (ECMWF-PWV) and PWV data calculated by GPS (GPS-PWV) were subjected to regression analysis to verify the reliability of the GPS-PWV data. The research results show that GPS-PWV and ECMWF-PWV have extremely high correlations; however, the climatic characteristics of some regions and the high spatial resolution of GPS-PWV are able to accurately calculate the high topographic relief of small areas. It is judged that the GPS-PWV is more accurate than the ECMWF-PWV. It is worth noting that the PWV trend of the regions during the 6-year-before period has not changed very much, but the rainfall trend has changed obviously. Except for the eastern region, most of the regions show a decreasing trend year by year. More long-term observations are still needed to prove whether this phenomenon relates to global warming. Long-term rainfall analysis showed that the topography blocked water vapor to the western, southern, and mountainous regions, making them distinctly wet or dry. The harmonic curve showed great consistency with the peaks of PWV and rainfall. However, in the northern and eastern parts of the windward side, the time when maximum rainfall occurred each year may be one month later than the time when the maximum PWV value occurred each year. The reason for this difference is likely to be a decrease in the number of autumn typhoons, resulting in a nearly one-month difference in PWV peaks and rainfall peaks. Finally, we analyzed the linear trend of GPS-PWV and temperature for all regions in Taiwan, and found that annual increasing rate of GPS-PWV and temperature of all regions are within 0.4–0.5 mm/year and 0.04–0.11 C°/year, respectively.     

Energy-optimal reconfiguration of satellite formation flying in the presence of uncertainties

In this study, a two-step control methodology is developed for energy-optimal reconfiguration of satellites in formation in the presence of uncertainties or external disturbances. First, based on a linear deterministic system model, an optimal control law is analytically determined such that a satellite maneuvers from an initial state to a final state relative to another satellite. The structure of this optimal solution is predetermined and simply given by a linear combination of the fundamental matrix solutions associated with the original equations of relative motion. Only the coefficients are to be determined to satisfy given initial and final conditions. In the second step, an uncertain nonlinear formation system is considered and a robust adaptive controller is designed to compensate for the effects of uncertainties or disturbances that the formation system may encounter. Although the control strategy is inspired by sliding mode control, it produces smooth control signals, thereby avoiding chattering. Also, an adaptation law is added such that the uncertainty or disturbance effects are effectively and quickly eliminated without a priori information about them. The combination of these two controllers guarantees that the satellite accurately tracks the optimal path in the unknown environment. Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed two-step control methodology, in which a satellite formation is optimally reconfigured under unknown environmental disturbances.     

自动测试技术在备件研制中的应用

主要阐述了自动测斌技术住数字电路板备件研制方面的应用。通过对某型引俄设备数字电路板研制的验证事例,探索了ATE和LASAR仿真软件用于备件电路板研制与测试验证的方法。结合装备实验,证明了将仿真技术作为高效的电路设计验证手段,并将ATE作为通用测试验证平台的可行性和先进性。     

一种地面模拟太阳电池阵开关分流方法研究

为了充分验证太阳帆板驱动机构功率传输通路的设计可靠性和生产过程控制的有效性,在分析太阳帆板驱动机构在轨真实工况及传统测试方法的基础上,设计了一种地面模拟电池阵开关分流的方法,该方法使用太阳电池阵模拟器模拟处于开关分流状态的分阵,利用具有两种工作模式并可自动高速切换的电子负载模拟分流开关管.将该方法应用于太阳帆板驱动机构的功率传输通路测试,给出了测试系统的组成及试验结果.试验结果表明该方法可有效模拟开关分流工况,提高了SADM产品地面验证的充分性.     

Statistical comparison of night-time NO2 observations in 2003–2006 from GOMOS and MIPAS instruments

GOMOS (Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars) and MIPAS (Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding) are remote sensing instruments on board the European Space Agency’s Envisat satellite. GOMOS and MIPAS have been designed for observations of stratospheric and mesospheric constituents, including ozone and nitrogen dioxide. Both instruments have a good global coverage of observations and can provide data also from the polar regions. In this paper, we compare night-time NO₂ data from GOMOS with those from MIPAS. We present statistics of selected sets of data spanning from the year 2003 to 2006. The results for low-to-mid latitudes show that the two instruments are in a good agreement in the middle stratosphere, the differences being typically less than 5%. In the upper stratosphere, GOMOS observations generally show 15% higher values than those from MIPAS. The bias is in virtually all cases smaller than the combined systematic error of the measurements, giving great confidence in the GOMOS and MIPAS data quality. The result for high mesospheric NO₂ mixing ratios observed in the polar regions during winter times indicate a good agreement between GOMOS and MIPAS. In the mesosphere, the difference is less than 35% and smaller than the systematic error. Due to the high mesospheric signal, MIPAS sensitivity decreases in the stratosphere which results in larger differences between the two instruments.     

基于图像模拟的HJ星CCD相机交叉定标

针对同一HJ-1星的两台CCD相机,提出基于图像模拟的交叉辐射定标方法:通过建立两台CCD相机图像DC值的数学关系,以获取地面目标图像的已定标的CCD为标准对未同时获取图像的待定标的CCD进行交叉定标,得到了2008年10月A2CCD和B2CCD的定标系数.利用贡格尔场野外实验数据和敦煌场的MODIS数据对定标系数进行真实性检验,并对该方法的主要误差来源进行了分析.结果表明,交叉定标具有较高的精度和可信度,可以在保证定标精度的同时,提高定标的频次.     

Installation and preliminary data analysis of Penang magnetic data Acquisition system (MAGDAS) in Malaysia

MAGDAS PEN was established on 19th September 2019 as one of the MAGDAS observatory arrays located at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) (5.15°, 100.50°). The main objective of the MAGDAS project is to monitor global electromagnetic and the ambient plasma density in the geospace environment. This installation has contributed to a better understanding of the Sun-Earth coupling system. This paper presents the installation process of one of the MAGDAS magnetometers named YU-8 T magnetic sensor and provides a preliminary analysis of geomagnetic HDZ components amplitude-time that was observed at PEN station. A one-month HDZ-geomagnetic field data was processed from 1st November to 30th November 2019. The daily variations with a consistent pattern in delta H geomagnetic field components are observed throughout the day with eastward electric field effects that are observed during solar peak hours. The delta H-component gradually increases around 0700LT and reaches the maximum reading at 1300LT with a range of value ~ 40-70nT. The value slowly decreases that started from 1400LT until the night time. The reading during the night time shows a constant variation with magnitude varies in between ?10nT to + 10nT. The average H-component value of the night time is used as the baseline for the observation system. Overall, the observed trends portray a good sign of solar quiet field and Sq with no solar-terrestrial disturbances.     

Analytical and numerical approaches of a solar array thermal analysis in a low-earth orbit satellite

This paper researches the thermal analysis of a fixed-type solar array in a low-earth orbit satellite through both an analytical method with a simplified thermal model and a numerical method with a detailed thermal model.