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A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Earth Observation Data".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 January 2022) | Viewed by 36777

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Dr. Jorge Vazquez

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Guest Editor

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
Interests: validation of remote sensing data; application of remote sensing to coastal regions; development of new remote sensing for high resolution; validation of remote sensing data sets in challenging areas, including the arctic and coastal regions
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Dr. Alexander Kokhanovsky

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Co-Guest Editor

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, 55128 Mainz, Germany
Interests: cloud remote sensing; aerosol remote sensing; trace gas remote sensing; snow remote sensing; radiative transfer
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Currently, one of the critical questions in the application of remote sensing data sets is “what data set do I use?” The answer to this question can depend on many factors, including temporal resolution, spatial resolution, data uncertainty, temporal coverage and spatial coverage. These types of questions are inherent to the user community and have a commonality to the broad range of remote sensing data sets, inclusive of sea level (altimetry), sea surface winds (scatterometry), and sea surface temperature (infrared sensors) and ocean color (visible). Users struggle with finding, in one place, information that can allow them to make a knowledgeable decision about the data set for their application.

We are looking for articles that address details and characteristics of remote sensing products, that could provide the user community with necessary information for making decisions on the appropriateness of products for specific applications and research problems. Articles that address the general characteristics of the data sets and specific examples of applications are highly encouraged. Additionally, articles that focus on data quality issues and/or uncertainties are encouraged. Comparison papers that can help users make decisions on the suitability of remote sensing data sets for their applications/research needs are highly encouraged.

Dr. Jorge Vazquez
Dr. Alexander Kokhanovsky
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Related Special Issue

Remote Sensing Data Sets II in Remote Sensing (1 article)

Published Papers (9 papers)

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10 pages, 4331 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Assessment of Terra/Aqua MODIS and Deep Convective Cloud Albedo Solar Calibration Accuracies and Stabilities Using Lunar Calibrated MERBE Results

by Grant Matthews

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(11), 2517; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14112517 - 24 May 2022

Viewed by 1692

Abstract

Moon calibrated radiometrically stable and relatively accurate Earth reflected solar measurements from the Moon and Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (MERBE) are compared here to primary channels of coaligned Terra/Aqua MODIS instruments. A space-based climate observing system immune to untracked drifts due to varying instrument calibration is a key priority for climate science. Measuring these changes in radiometers such as MODIS and compensating for them is critical to such a system. The independent MERBE project using monthly lunar scans has made a proven factor of ten improvement in calibration stability and relative accuracy of measurements by all devices originally built for another project called ‘CERES’, also on the Terra and Aqua satellites. The MERBE comparison shown here uses spectrally invariant Deep Convective Cloud or DCC targets as a transfer, with the objective of detecting possible unknown MODIS calibration trends or errors. Most MODIS channel 1–3 collection 5 calibrations are shown to be correct and stable within stated accuracies of 3% relative to the Moon, much in line with changes made for MODIS collection 6. Stable lunar radiance standards are then separately compared to the sometimes used calibration metric of the coldest DCCs as standalone calibration targets, when also located by MODIS. The analysis overall for the first time finds such clouds can serve as an absolute solar target on the order of 1% accuracy and are stable to ±0.3% decade

^{- 1}

with two sigma confidences, based on the Moon from 2000–2015. Finally, time series analysis is applied to potential DCC albedo corrected Terra data. This shows it is capable of beginning the narrowing of cloud climate forcing uncertainty before 2015; some twenty five years sooner than previously calculated elsewhere, for missions yet to launch. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing Data Sets)

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24 pages, 5895 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Comparison of GHRSST SST Analysis in the Arctic Ocean and Alaskan Coastal Waters Using Saildrones

by Jorge Vazquez-Cuervo, Sandra L. Castro, Michael Steele, Chelle Gentemann, Jose Gomez-Valdes and Wenqing Tang

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(3), 692; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14030692 - 1 Feb 2022

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3339

Abstract

There is high demand for complete satellite SST maps (or L4 SST analyses) of the Arctic regions to monitor the rapid environmental changes occurring at high latitudes. Although there are a plethora of L4 SST products to choose from, satellite-based products evolve constantly with the advent of new satellites and frequent changes in SST algorithms, with the intent of improving absolute accuracies. The constant change of these products, as reflected by the version product, make it necessary to do periodic validations against in situ data. Eight of these L4 products are compared here against saildrone data from two 2019 campaigns in the western Arctic, as part of the MISST project. The accuracy of the different products is estimated using different statistical methods, from standard and robust statistics to Taylor diagrams. Results are also examined in terms of spatial scales of variability using auto- and cross-spectral analysis. The three products with the best performance, at this point and time, are used in a case study of the thermal features of the Yukon–Kuskokwim delta. The statistical analyses show that two L4 SST products had consistently better relative accuracy when compared to the saildrone subsurface temperatures. Those are the NOAA/NCEI DOISST and the RSS MWOI SSTs. In terms of the spectral variance and feature resolution, the UK Met Office OSTIA product appears to outperform all others at reproducing the fine scale features, especially in areas of high spatial variability, such as the Alaska coast. It is known that L4 analyses generate small-scale features that get smoothed out as the SSTs are interpolated onto spatially complete grids. However, when the high-resolution satellite coverage is sparse, which is the case in the Arctic regions, the analyses tend to produce more spurious small-scale features. The analyses here indicate that the high-resolution coverage, attainable with current satellite infrared technology, is too sparse, due to cloud cover to support very high resolution L4 SST products in high latitudinal regions. Only for grid resolutions of ~9–10 km or greater does the smoothing of the gridding process balance out the small-scale noise resulting from the lack of high-resolution infrared data. This scale, incidentally, agrees with the Rossby deformation radius in the Arctic Ocean (~10 km). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing Data Sets)

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23 pages, 24410 KiB

Open AccessArticle

SI-STSAR-7: A Large SAR Images Dataset with Spatial and Temporal Information for Classification of Winter Sea Ice in Hudson Bay

by Wei Song, Wen Gao, Qi He, Antonio Liotta and Weiqi Guo

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(1), 168; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14010168 - 31 Dec 2021

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3824

Abstract

Remote sensing satellites have been broadly applied to sea ice monitoring. The substantial increase in satellite imagery provides a large amount of data support for deep learning methods in the sea ice classification field. However, there is a lack of public remote sensing datasets to facilitate sea ice classification with spatial and temporal information and to benchmark the deep learning methods. In this paper, we provide a labeled large sea ice dataset derived from time-series sentinel-1 SAR images, dubbed SI-STSAR-7, and a validated dataset construction method for sea ice classification research. The SI-STSAR-7 dataset includes seven different sea ice types corresponding to different sea ice development stages in Hudson Bay during winter, and its samples are time sequences of SAR image patches in order to embody the differences of backscattering intensity and textures between different sea ice types, as well as the change of sea ice with time. We construct the dataset by first performing noise reduction and mitigation of incidence angle dependence on SAR images, and then producing data samples and labeling them based on our proposed sample-producing principles and the weekly regional ice charts provided by Canadian Ice Service. Three baseline classification methods are developed on SI-STSAR-7 to establish benchmarks, which are evaluated with accuracy and kappa coefficient. The sample-producing principles are verified through experiments. Based on the experimental results, sea ice classification can be implemented well on SI-STSAR-7. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing Data Sets)

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19 pages, 23659 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Metop First Generation AVHRR FRAC SST Reanalysis Version 1

by Victor Pryamitsyn, Boris Petrenko, Alexander Ignatov and Yury Kihai

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(20), 4046; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13204046 - 10 Oct 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2534

Abstract

The first full-mission global AVHRR FRAC sea surface temperature (SST) dataset with a nominal 1.1 km resolution at nadir was produced from three Metop First Generation (FG) satellites: Metop-A (2006-on), -B (2012-on) and -C (2018-on), using the NOAA Advanced Clear Sky Processor for Ocean (ACSPO) SST enterprise system. Historical reprocessing (‘Reanalysis-1’, RAN1) starts at the beginning of each mission and continues into near-real time (NRT). ACSPO generates two SST products, one with global regression (GR; highly sensitive to skin SST), and another one with piecewise regression (PWR; proxy for depth SST) algorithms. Small residual effects of orbital and sensor instabilities on SST retrievals are mitigated by retraining the regression coefficients daily, using matchups with drifting and tropical moored buoys within moving time windows. In RAN, the training windows are centered at the processed day. In NRT, the same size windows are employed but delayed in time, ending four to ten days prior to the processed day. Delayed-mode RAN reprocessing follows the NRT with a two-month lag, resulting in a higher quality and a more consistent SST record. In addition to its completeness, the newly created Metop-FG RAN1 SST dataset shows very close agreement with in situ data (including the fully independent Argo floats), well within the NOAA specifications for accuracy (global mean bias; ±0.2 K) and precision (global standard deviation; 0.6 K) in a ~20% clear-sky domain (percent of clear-sky SST pixels to the total of ice-free ocean). All performance statistics are stable in time, and consistent across the three platforms. The Metop-FG RAN1 data set is archived at the NASA JPL PO.DAAC and NOAA NCEI. This paper documents the newly created dataset and evaluates its performance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing Data Sets)

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12 pages, 2750 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

A Technical Review of Planet Smallsat Data: Practical Considerations for Processing and Using PlanetScope Imagery

by Amy E. Frazier and Benjamin L. Hemingway

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(19), 3930; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13193930 - 30 Sep 2021

Cited by 107 | Viewed by 9570

Abstract

With the ability to capture daily imagery of Earth at very high spatial resolutions, commercial smallsats are emerging as a key resource for the remote sensing community. Planet (Planet Labs, Inc., San Francisco, CA, USA) operates the largest constellation of Earth imaging smallsats, which have been capturing multispectral imagery for consumer use since 2016. Use of these images is growing in the remote sensing community, but the variation in radiometric and geometric quality compared to traditional platforms (i.e., Landsat, MODIS, etc.) means the images are not always ‘analysis ready’ upon download. Neglecting these variations can impact derived products and analyses. Users also must contend with constantly evolving technology, which improves products but can create discrepancies across sensor generations. This communication provides a technical review of Planet’s PlanetScope smallsat data streams and extant literature to provide practical considerations to the remote sensing community for utilizing these images in remote sensing research. Radiometric and geometric issues for researchers to consider are highlighted alongside a review of processing completed by Planet and innovations being developed by the user community to foster the adoption and use of these images for scientific applications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing Data Sets)

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20 pages, 4938 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Analysis of the Monthly and Spring-Neap Tidal Variability of Satellite Chlorophyll-a and Total Suspended Matter in a Turbid Coastal Ocean Using the DINEOF Method

by Mengmeng Yang, Faisal Ahmed Khan, Hongzhen Tian and Qinping Liu

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(4), 632; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13040632 - 10 Feb 2021

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3118

Abstract

Missing spatial data is one of the major concerns associated with the application of satellite data. The Data INterpolating Empirical Orthogonal Functions (DINEOF) method has been proven to be an effective tool for filling spatial gaps in various satellite data products. The Ariake Sea, which is a turbid coastal sea, shows the large spatial and temporal variability of chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) and total suspended matter (TSM). However, ocean color satellite data for this region usually have large gaps, which affects the accurate analysis of Chl-a and TSM variability. In this study, we applied the DINEOF method to fill the missing pixels from the regionally tuned Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-Aqua (hereafter, MODIS) Chl-a and MODIS-derived TSM datasets for the period 2002–2017. The validation results showed that the DINEOF reconstructed data were accurate and reliable. Furthermore, the Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOF) analysis based on the reconstructed data was used to quantitatively analyze the spatial and temporal variability of Chl-a and TSM at both monthly and individual events of spring-neap tidal scales. The first three EOF modes of Chl-a showed seasonal variability mainly caused by precipitation, the sea surface temperature (SST), and river discharge for the first EOF mode and the sea level amplitude for the second. The first three EOF modes of TSM exhibited both seasonal and spring-neap tidal variability. The first and second EOF modes of TSM displayed spring-neap tidal variability caused by the sea level amplitude. The second EOF mode of TSM also showed seasonal variability caused by the sea level amplitude. In this study, we first applied the DINEOF method to reconstruct the satellite data and to capture the major spatial and temporal variability of Chl-a and TSM for the Ariake Sea. Our results demonstrate that the DINEOF method can reconstruct patchy oceanic color datasets and improve spatio-temporal variability analysis. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing Data Sets)

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20 pages, 7116 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Validation of Satellite Sea Surface Temperatures and Long-Term Trends in Korean Coastal Regions over Past Decades (1982–2018)

by Eun-Young Lee and Kyung-Ae Park

Remote Sens. 2020, 12(22), 3742; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12223742 - 13 Nov 2020

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3471

Abstract

Validation of daily Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) data from 1982 to 2018 was performed by comparison with quality-controlled in situ water temperature data from Korea Meteorological Administration moored buoys and Korea Oceanographic Data Center observations in the coastal regions around the Korean Peninsula. In contrast to the relatively high accuracy of the SSTs in the open ocean, the SSTs of the coastal regions exhibited large root-mean-square errors (RMSE) ranging from 0.75 K to 1.99 K and a bias ranging from −0.51 K to 1.27 K, which tended to be amplified towards the coastal lines. The coastal SSTs in the Yellow Sea presented much higher RMSE and bias due to the appearance of cold water on the surface induced by vigorous tidal mixing over shallow bathymetry. The long-term trends of OISSTs were also compared with those of in situ water temperatures over decades. Although the trends of OISSTs deviated from those of in situ temperatures in coastal regions, the spatial patterns of the OISST trends revealed a similar structure to those of in situ temperature trends. The trends of SSTs using satellite data explained about 99% of the trends in in situ temperatures in offshore regions (>25 km from the shoreline). This study discusses the limitations and potential of global SSTs as well as long-term SST trends, especially in Korean coastal regions, considering diverse applications of satellite SSTs and increasing vulnerability to climate change. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing Data Sets)

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17 pages, 4517 KiB

Open AccessTechnical Note

A Completeness and Complementarity Analysis of the Data Sources in the NOAA In Situ Sea Surface Temperature Quality Monitor (iQuam) System

by Haifeng Zhang and Alexander Ignatov

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(18), 3741; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13183741 - 18 Sep 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2356

Abstract

In situ sea surface temperatures (SST) are the key component of the calibration and validation (Cal/Val) of satellite SST retrievals and data assimilation (DA). The NOAA in situ SST Quality Monitor (iQuam) aims to collect, from various sources, all available in situ SST data, and integrate them into a maximally complete, uniform, and accurate dataset to support these applications. For each in situ data type, iQuam strives to ingest data from several independent sources, to ensure most complete coverage, at the cost of some redundancy in data feeds. The relative completeness of various inputs and their consistency and mutual complementarity are often unknown and are the focus of this study. For four platform types customarily employed in satellite Cal/Val and DA (drifting buoys, tropical moorings, ships, and Argo floats), five widely known data sets are analyzed: (1) International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS), (2) Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC), (3) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), (4) Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS), and (5) Argo Global Data Assembly Centers (GDACs). Each data set reports SSTs from one or more platform types. It is found that drifting buoys are more fully represented in FNMOC and CMEMS. Ships are reported in FNMOC and ICOADS, which are best used in conjunction with each other, but not in CMEMS. Tropical moorings are well represented in ICOADS, FNMOC, and CMEMS. Some CMEMS mooring reports are sampled every 10 min (compared to the standard 1 h sampling in all other datasets). The CMEMS Argo profiling data set is, as expected, nearly identical with those from the two Argo GDACs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing Data Sets)

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11 pages, 13036 KiB

Open AccessLetter

Manual-Based Improvement Method for the ASTER Global Water Body Data Base

by Hiroyuki Fujisada, Minoru Urai and Akira Iwasaki

Remote Sens. 2020, 12(20), 3373; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12203373 - 15 Oct 2020

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2233

Abstract

A water body detection technique is an essential part of digital elevation model (DEM) generation to delineate land–water boundaries and to set flattened elevations. The initial tile-based water body data that are created during production of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection radiometer (ASTER) GDEM, as a by-product, are incorporated into ASTER GDEM V3 to improve the quality. At the same time as ASTER GDEM V3, the Global Water Body Data Base (ASTWBD) Version 1 is also released to the public. The ASTWBD generation consists of two parts: separation from land area, and classification into three categories: sea, lake, and river. Sea water bodies have zero elevation. Lake water bodies have flattened elevations. River water bodies have a gradual step-down from upstream to downstream with a step of one meter. The separation process from land area is carried out automatically using an algorithm, except for sea-ice removal, to delineate the real seashore lines in the high latitude areas; almost all of the water bodies are created through this process. The classification process into three categories, i.e., sea, river, and lake, is carried out, and incorporated into ASTER GDEM V3. For inland water bodies, it is not possible to perfectly detect all water bodies using reflectance and spectral index, which are the only available parameters for optical sensors. The only way available to identify the undetected inland water bodies is to manually copy them with visual inspection from the earth’s surface images, like Landsat images. GeoCover2000 images are the main part of the object images. Color–Land ASTER MosaicS (CLAMS) images are used to cover the deficiency of the GeoCover2000 images. This kind of time-consuming, unsophisticated way is inevitable as it is a manual-based method to improve the quality of the ASTWBD. This paper describes the manual-based improvement method; specifically, how deficient water body images are efficiently copied as rasterized images from the earth’s surface images to obtain a more complete global water body data set. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing Data Sets)

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