Das Projekt "SNOW-TOOLS: Research and Development of Remote Sensing Methods with Main Focus on Snow Hydrology" wird/wurde gefördert durch: Bundesamt für Bildung und Wissenschaft. Es wird/wurde ausgeführt durch: Universität Bern, Institut für Angewandte Physik.This is a shared-cost action proposal with the objective to: Develop generic methods for correction and interpretation of optical and microwave data with the main aim of generating high-level products, improving the information content in microwave and optical data, and development of techniques for information extraction specific to snow hydrology. The methodological research and development will focus on developing generic methods lo be generally applicable, and the methods will support generation of high-level end products, e.g. snow extent, melt onset and snow water equivalent (SWE) estimates. The methods will handle the nearby remote sensing scenario where data from several satellites and often multitemporal and ancillary data should be applied to obtain the desired information. Dedicated experiments for acquisition of space- and airborne data combined with ground truth measurements will be performed. These data combined with already existing data will form the basis for the development of inversion algorithm and for demonstration of the generic tools in an hydrological application. The data will be used as input to models in order to improve the accuracy of seasonal and short-term snowmelt run-off prediction. The project team consist of scientists in remote sensing and hydrology which during the last years have made significant contributions to the development of algorithms for retrieval of geophysical parameters from remote sensing data, and in particular snow parameter extraction. By close cooperating with the end users unambigous user requirements will be derived and dissimination of the results to potential users ensured. The proposal is submitted to the Environment and Climate programme under theme 3.1.1. The proposal is relevant to the theme since it focus on methodological research and development of generic tools which improves measurements of snow cover and properties.
Das Projekt "EUFORA: European Forest Observations by Radars" wird/wurde gefördert durch: Bundesamt für Bildung und Wissenschaft. Es wird/wurde ausgeführt durch: Gamma Remote Sensing Research and Consulting.EUFORA is a methodological research project proposed by a consortium of recognised specialists in Europe in the field of radar remote sensing of forests. The objectives of the proposal are: 1) to evaluate the most advanced radar remote sensing research results with respect to forest information required in environment and climate studies, and also in forest management operations; 2) to validate methods and results in different European sites, in order to define unified methods applicable in European context. Users in forestry and environmental monitoring at national and E.U. level will contribute to the project by defining the relevant forest information to be retrieved and to evaluate the results. The project is proposed to occupy a two year period and will include the following activities: 1) Cross validation of methods available among forum members in terms of forest conditions (sites in Finland, Sweden, France, UK, Switzerland) and in terms of methodology used. The radar data include satellite and airborne data, existing and to be acquired during the project. 2) Conduct of 2 joint experiments, one in Finland and one in France, with airborne systems operated by team members during satellite acquisition, in order to resolve discrepancies and to improve our understanding of specific topics (e.g; biomass retrieval, forest interferometry). 3) Synthesis of the results and development of methods applicable to a large range of forest conditions in Europe. The results will be evaluated quantitatively by users of forest information at national and E.U. level (the subcontractors will make significant contributions to these aims) An evaluation of the results in terms of their contribution to climate studies will be given. We anticipate providing unified methods for the following: - mapping of forest/non-forest and mapping of broad leaf/coniferous forest using multitemporal intensity and/or interferometric ERS data. - Forest change detection (seasonal, freeze/thaw, clearcutting, storm, fire damage (if any)) using multitemporal/interferometric ERS data. - Forest biomass parameter extraction using ERS interferometric and complementary airborne data.
Das Projekt "FP4-ENV 2C, CLOUDMAP: Cirrus and Contrail Cloud-Top-Maps from Satellites for Weather Forecasting and Climate Change Analysis" wird/wurde gefördert durch: Bundesamt für Bildung und Wissenschaft / Kommission der Europäischen Gemeinschaften Brüssel. Es wird/wurde ausgeführt durch: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH), Institut für Geodäsie und Photogrammetrie.Overall Objectives To provide cloud-top parameters (heights, amounts, types, wind-fields) to Weather Forecasters and Global Climate Modellers to improve their ability to improve forecasts and quantify the impact of natural and anthropogenic changes to the environment. A major European meteorological institute will evaluate the accuracy and utility of these products including conducting a user market survey of their potential for European meteorological research and operational use. Another major meteorological research centre will quantitatively evaluate the utility of these new cloud-top parameters to enbance our understanding of the effects of sub-sonic contrail clouds on the climate including a comparison of parameters against existing spatial frequency maps derived from manual interpretation of AVHRR data. Three different methods of measuring cloud-top parameters will be assessed: stereoscopic observations, forbidden Oxygen and lidar. Validation of these parameters will be catried out using ground-based wide-field stereo imagers as well as ground-based millimetre radar and ceilometers. Proposal Content CLOUDMAP will focus on the establishment and demonstration of new data-sets from existing and new sensors which will be of great utility for climate change analysis. In particular, it is well known that current estimates of Cirrus clouds measured using low resolution meteorological sensors do not properly take into account the fine detail and broken nature of Cirrus clouds. It is therefore a key objective of this proposal to produce cloud-top parameters to try to understand whether current estimates are erroneous and by how much. Anthropogenic changes affect the upper atmosphere principally through contrails formed from sub-sonic jet aircraft at middle to high latitudes. Prime Contractor: University College London, Department of Photogrammetry and Surveying; London/UK.
Das Projekt "WAVEFRONT: GPS/Water Vapour Experiment for Regional Operational Network Trials" wird/wurde gefördert durch: Bundesamt für Bildung und Wissenschaft. Es wird/wurde ausgeführt durch: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH), Institut für Geodäsie und Photogrammetrie.It has recently been demonstrated that signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS) of navigation satellites can be used (in a supplementary role to their positioning and navigation function) as a remote sensing tool to estimate the integrated precipitable water vapour (IPWV) content of the atmosphere ('GPS meteorology'), potentially with sub-millimetre accuracy and 30 minute temporal resolution on an all-weather, world-wide basis. Such data would be of considerable benefit to both climate studies and weather forecasting. This proposal will create links with the user meteorological and climatological communities in order that the EO data obtained can be fully utilised. The techniques of GPS data processing will be examined with the aim of providing an optimum, automatic system for the routine retrieval of IPWV. The validation and calibration phase of the technique will involve the collaboration of several research centres and the use of Water Vapour Radiometer (WVR) measurements. The radiometer instrumentation hardware and software will also be examined within the scope of this proposal to provide the most accurate estimates of IPWV. More specifically, the proposals main objectives are to: - Validate the accuracy and temporal resolution of GPS meteorology, by comparison with ground-based water vapour radiometry (WVR), space-based radiometry (SSM/I) and radiosonde profiles, - To assess the feasibility of near real-time, automatic estimation of IPWV from GPS to an accuracy of 1 mm, - To compute a post-processed data set of GPS IPWV estimates from a European sub-set of established permanent GPS monitoring stations (part of the International GPS Service (IGS) for Geodynamics network), for climate modelling studies and, - to investigate the possibility of obtaining a more detailed tomographic profile of water vapour over a smaller, denser GPS network to provide a data set to study micro-scale synoptic processes. As a result of this proposal we aim to provide data sets from which climatologists will be able to examine a number of key questions remaining in the field of climate study. The feasibility of using GPS IPWV estimates on a regional scale to constrain numerical weather prediction (NWP) will also be assessed. This research may also provide spin-offs in the field of Geodesy, since any improved atmospheric modelling techniques developed for GPS will ultimately feedback into improved GPS positioning (in particular heighting) precisions.