The S-NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument, a polar orbiting Earth remote sensing instrument built using a strong MODIS background, employs a similarly designed on-board calibrating source—a V-grooved blackbody for the Thermal Emissive Bands (TEB). The central wavelengths of most VIIRS TEBs are very close to those of MODIS with the exception of the 10.7 μm channel. T...

The estimation of retrieval uncertainty and stability are essential for the accurate interpretation of data in scientific research, use in analyses, or numerical models. The primary uncertainty sources of satellite SST retrievals are due to errors in spacecraft navigation, sensor calibration, sensor noise, retrieval algorithms, and incomplete identification of corrupted retrievals. In this stud...

Snow is an important component of the water cycle, and its estimation in hydrological models is of great significance concerning the simulation and forecasting of flood events due to snow-melt. The assimilation of Snow Cover Area (SCA) in physical distributed hydrological models is a possible source of improvement of snowmelt-related floods. In this study, the assimilation in the LISFLOOD model...

A challenging problem in snow mapping is the discrimination of snow from clouds. Snow and clouds often have similar spectral reflectance features across the spectrum and may have similar temperatures making discrimination difficult. Data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra spacecraft, is used to generate many geophys...

[1] This paper analyzes MODIS 1 km albedo kernels of 7 spectral bands over Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and through these kernels develops a new high quality dataset that provides a simple statistical method to scale up spectral and broadband albedos from pixel to arbitrary coarse resolution grid square for use in climate models. This dataset significantly improves characterization...

1 This paper presents a new burned area product for the tropical 2 forests in South America and South-east Asia. The product is derived 3 from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) mul4 tispectral surface reflectance data and Active Fire hotspots using a 5 novel rare class detection framework that builds data-adaptive clas6 sification models for different spatial regions and lan...

extended abstract   introduction the most important indicator of climate in a region is vegetation community. climate can be different over large areas, because of changes in vegetation community. vegetation influences weather and climate in its surrounding areas mostly by way of evapotranspiration and albedo so they play a role in the earth’s energy balance. these effects on the earth’s energy...

[1] We analyze the aerosol distribution and composition in the Northern Hemisphere during the Asian Pacific Regional Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE-Asia) field experiment in spring 2001. We use the Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) model in this study, in conjunction with satellite retrieval from the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on EOS...

In this study we examine the relationship between remotely sensed, in situ and modelled land surface temperature (LST) over a heterogeneous land-cover (LC) enclosed in alpine terrain. This relationship can help to understand to what extent the remotely sensed data can be used to improve model simulations of land surface parameters such as LST in mountainous areas. LST from the MODerate resoluti...

The 14-channel Ames Airborne Tracking Sunphotometer (AATS) was operated on a Jetstream 31 (J31) aircraft in March 2006 during MILAGRO/INTEX-B (Megacity Initiative-Local And Global Research Observations/Phase B of the Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment). We compare AATS retrievals of spectral aerosol optical depth (AOD) and related aerosol properties with corresponding spatially coin...