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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 235 records · Page 13
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NASA NTRS2020

Airborne Radiometry for Calibration, Validation, and Research in Oceanic, Coastal, and Inland Waters

Present-day ocean color satellite sensors, which principally provide reliable data on chlorophyll, sediments, and colored dissolved organic material in the open ocean, are not well suited for coastal and inland water studies for a variety of reasons, including coarse spatial and spectral resolution plus challenges with atmospheric correction. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) airborne mission concepts tested in 2011, 2013, 2017, and 2018 over Monterey Bay, CA, and nearby inland waters have demonstrated the feasibility of improving airborne monitoring and research activities in case-1 and case-2 aquatic ecosystems through the combined use of state-of-the-art above- and in-water measurement capabilities. These competencies have evolved through time to produce a sensor-web approach: imaging spectrometer, microradiometers, and a sun photometer (airborne) with their analogous algorithms, and with corresponding in-water radiometers and ground-based sun photometry. The NASA airborne instrument suite and mission concept demonstrations, leveraging high quality above- and in-water data, significantly improves the fidelity as well as the spatial and spectral resolution of observations for studying and monitoring water quality in oceanic, coastal, and inland water ecosystems. The goal of this series of projects was to develop and fly a portable airborne sensor suite for NASA science missions focusing on a gradient of water types from oligotrophic to turbid waters addressing the challenges of an optically complex coastal ocean zone and inland waters. The airborne radiometry in this range of aquatic conditions and sites has supported improved results of studies of water quality and biogeochemistry and provides capabilities for research areas such as ocean productivity and biogeochemistry; aquatic impacts of coastal landscape alteration; coastal, estuarine, and inland waters ecosystem productivity; atmospheric correction; and regional climate variability.

atmospheric correction↗
NASA NTRS2000

Profiling of Atmospheric Water Vapor from the SSM/T-2 Radiometric Measurements

An advantage of using the millimeter-wave measurements for water vapor profiling is the ability to probe beyond a moderate cloud cover. Such a capability has been demonstrated from an airborne MIR (Millimeter-wave Imaging Radiometer) flight over the Pacific Ocean during an intense observation period of TOGA/COARE (Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere/ Couple Ocean Atmospheric Response Experiment) in early 1993. A Cloud Lidar System (CLS) and MODIS Airborne Simulator (MAS) were on board the same aircraft to identify the presence of clouds and cloud type. The retrieval algorithm not only provides output of a water vapor profile, but also the cloud liquid water and approximate cloud altitude required to satisfy convergence of the retrieval. The validity of these cloud parameters has not been verified previously. In this document, these cloud parameters are compared with those derived from concurrent measurements from the CLS and AMPR (Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer).

Wang, J. R.↗
NASA NTRS1977

Remote sensing of ocean color and detection of chlorophyll content

The chlorophyll enrichment of the water in an equatorial upwelling was surveyed and described with the aid of a radiometer specially designed for the airborne measurement of ocean color. A relation is proposed between airborne measurement of difference of albedos at two wavelengths in the blue and green, and the concentration of chlorophyll in the ocean.

Deschamps, P. Y.↗
NASA NTRS1980

Microwave radiometric aircraft observations of the Fabry-Perot interference fringes of an ice-water system

Airborne stepped-frequency microwave radiometer (SFMR) observations of the Fabry-Perot interference fringes of ice-water systems are discussed. The microwave emissivity at normal incidence of a smooth layered dielectric medium over a semi-infinite dielectric medium is examined for the case of ice over water as a function of ice thickness and attenuation coefficient, and the presence of quarter-wavelength oscillations in emissivity as the ice thickness and frequency are varied is pointed out. Experimental observations of pronounced quarter-wavelength oscillations in radiometric brightness temperature due to the Fabry-Perot interference fringes over smooth sea ice and lake ice varying in roughness as the radiometer frequencies were scanned are then presented.

Harrington, R. F.↗
NASA NTRS1980

Survey of Workshops on Meteorological and Environmental Inputs to Aviation Systems

Various aspects of aviation meteorology are discussed with respect to their relative effects on aircraft terminal operations. Existing data on turbulence and wind shear from aircraft and towers are summarized. The significance of obtaining more real time wind and temperature information is emphasized. The application and testing of various radiometer devices are also described. Airborne methods to indicate wind differences at flight altitude and at touchdown are reported.

Frost, W.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Optical and microphysical properties of a cold cirrus cloud - Evidence for regions of small ice particles

An airborne lidar and a scanning radiometer aboard an ER-2 aircraft were used to observe a cold cirrus cloud, and a Forward Scattering Spectrometer Probe (FSSP) was used to obtain simultaneous in situ microphysical observations at two altitudes within the cloud. Lidar depolarization ratio data show that the clouds were composed predominantly of ice crystals. At an altitude where the temperature was -62.7 C, the lidar and radiometer analysis gave a visible extinction to infrared absorption ratio (alpha) of 2.3, while the cloud microphysics data provided an alpha value of 3.77. The discrepancy is attributed to undersizing of particles by the FSSP. Direct and remote measurements showed better agreement for a lower layer where the temperature was -47.3 C.

Platt, C. M. R.↗
NASA NTRS1997

The Impact of Microwave-Derived Surface Soil Moisture on Watershed Hydrological Modeling

The usefulness of incorporating microwave-derived soil moisture information in a semi-distributed hydrological model was demonstrated for the Washita '92 experiment in the Little Washita River watershed in Oklahoma. Initializing the hydrological model with surface soil moisture fields from the ESTAR airborne L-band microwave radiometer on a single wet day at the start of the study period produced more accurate model predictions of soil moisture than a standard hydrological initialization with streamflow data over an eight-day soil moisture drydown.

ONeill, P. E.↗
NASA NTRS1997

Microwave Remote Sensing of Soil Moisture for Estimation of Soil Properties

Surface soil moisture dynamics was derived using microwave remote sensing, and employed to estimate soil physical and hydraulic properties. The L-band ESTAR radiometer was employed in an airborne campaign over the Little Washita watershed, Oklahoma during June 10-18, 1992. Brightness temperature (TB) data were employed in a soil moisture inversion algorithm which corrected for vegetation and soil effects. Analyses of spatial TB and soil moisture dynamics during the dry-down period revealed a direct relationship between changes in TB, soil moisture and soil texture. Extensive regression analyses were carried out which yielded statistically significant quantitative relationships between ratio of percent sand to percent clay (RSC, a term derived to quantify soil texture) and saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat) in terms of change components of TB and surface soil moisture. Validation of results indicated that both RSC and Ksat can be estimated with reasonable accuracy. These findings have potential applications for deriving spatial distributions of RSC and Ksat over large areas.

Mattikalli, Nandish M.↗
NASA NTRS1997

MIR Measurements of Atmospheric Water Vapor Profiles

Three subjects related to atmospheric water vapor profiling using the 183.3 GHz absorption line are discussed in this paper. First, data acquired by an airborne millimeter-wave imaging radiometer (MIR) over ocean surface in the western Pacific are used to estimate three-dimensional (3-D) distribution of atmospheric water vapor. The instrument's radiometric measurements with mixed vertical and horizontal polarizations require modifications to the retrieval algorithm used in the past. It is demonstrated that, after the modifications, the new algorithm can provide adequate retrieval of water vapor profiles, even though the measured data are of mixed polarizations. Next, the retrieved profiles, in terms of water vapor mixing ratio rho (g/kg), are compared with those measured in near concurrence by dropsondes from a research aircraft in the western Pacific and by a ground-based Raman lidar at Wallops Island, Virginia. The ratio of the standard deviation to the mean rho is found to be 0.12 at 0.25 km altitude and gradually degraded to 0.67 at the highest altitude of the retrieval of 10.25 km. Finally, the effect of the "initial guess" relative humidity profile on the final retrieved product is analyzed with respect to the condition for the convergent retrieval. It is found that the effect is minimal if the initial profile is not unrealistically different from the true one. If the initial profile is very different from the true one, the final retrieved product could be subject to a substantial error. Tightening of the convergent condition in the retrieval helped reduce magnitude of the error, but not remove it totally. It is concluded that an initial profile based on climatology is likely to provide most reliable retrieval results.

Wang, J. R.↗
NASA NTRS2012

An OSSE on Mesoscale Model Assimilation of Simulated HIRAD-Observed Hurricane Surface Winds

The hazards of landfalling hurricanes are well known, but progress on improving the intensity forecasts of these deadly storms at landfall has been slow. Many cite a lack of high-resolution data sets taken inside the core of a hurricane, and the lack of reliable measurements in extreme conditions near the surface of hurricanes, as possible reasons why even the most state-of-the-art forecasting models cannot seem to forecast intensity changes better. The Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD) is a new airborne microwave remote sensor for observing hurricanes, and is operated and researched by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in partnership with the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory/Hurricane Research Division, the University of Central Florida, the University of Michigan, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. This instrument?s purpose is to study the wind field of a hurricane, specifically observing surface wind speeds and rain rates, in what has traditionally been the most difficult areas for other instruments to study; the high wind and heavy rain regions. Dr. T. N. Krishnamurti has studied various data assimilation techniques for hurricane and monsoon rain rates, and this study builds off of results obtained from utilizing his style of physical initializations of rainfall observations, but obtaining reliable observations in heavy rain regions has always presented trouble to our research of high-resolution rainfall forecasting. Reliable data from these regions at such a high resolution and wide swath as HIRAD provides is potentially very valuable to mesoscale forecasting of hurricane intensity. This study shows how the data assimilation technique of Ensemble Kalman Filtering (EnKF) in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model can be used to incorporate wind, and later rain rate, data into a mesoscale model forecast of hurricane intensity. The study makes use of an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) with a simulated HIRAD dataset sampled during a hurricane and uses EnKF to forecast the track and intensity prediction of the hurricane. Comparisons to truth and error metrics are used to assess the model?s forecast performance.

Albers, Cerese↗
NASA NTRS2006

Improved Hurricane Boundary Layer Observations with the Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler

During the NOAA/NESDIS 2005 Hurricane Season (HS2005) and the 2006 Winter Experiment, the University of Massachusetts (UMass) installed two instruments on the NOAA N42RF WP-3D research aircraft: the Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler (IWRAP) and the Simultaneous Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR). IWRAP is a dual-band (C- and Ku), dual-polarized pencil-beam airborne radar that profiles the volume backscatter and Doppler velocity from rain and that also measures the ocean backscatter response. It simultaneously profiles along four separate incidence angles while conically scanning at 60 RPM. SFMR is a C-band nadir viewing radiometer that measures the emission from the ocean surface and intervening atmosphere simultaneously at six frequencies. It is designed to obtain the surface wind speed and the column average rain rate. Both instruments have previously been flown during the 2002, 2003 and 2004 hurricane seasons. For the HS2005, the IWRAP system was modified to implement a raw data acquisition system. The importance of the raw data system arises when trying to profile the atmosphere all the way down to the surface with a non-nadir looking radar system. With this particular geometry, problems arise mainly from the fact that both rain and ocean provide a return echo coincident in time through the antenna s main lobe. This paper shows how this limitation has been removed and presents initial results demonstrating its new capabilities to derive the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) wind field within the inner core of hurricanes to much lower altitudes than the ones the original system was capable of, and to analyze the spectral response of the ocean backscatter and the rain under different wind and rain conditions.

tropical cyclones↗
NASA NTRS2001

Airborne Sunphotometer Studies of Aerosol Properties and Effects, Including Closure Among Satellite, Suborbital Remote, and In situ Measurements

Airborne sunphotometry has been used to measure aerosols from North America, Europe, and Africa in coordination with satellite and in situ measurements in TARFOX (1996), ACE-2 (1997), PRIDE (2000), and SAFARI 2000. Similar coordinated measurements of Asian aerosols are being conducted this spring in ACE-Asia and are planned for North American aerosols this summer in CLAMS. This paper summarizes the approaches used, key results, and implications for aerosol properties and effects, such as single scattering albedo and regional radiative forcing. The approaches exploit the three-dimensional mobility of airborne sunphotometry to access satellite scenes over diverse surfaces (including open ocean with and without sunglint) and to match exactly the atmospheric layers sampled by airborne in situ measurements and other radiometers. These measurements permit tests of the consistency, or closure, among such diverse measurements as aerosol size-resolved chemical composition; number or mass concentration; light extinction, absorption, and scattering (total, hemispheric back and 180 deg.); and radiative fluxes. In this way the airborne sunphotometer measurements provide a key link between satellite and in situ measurements that helps to understand any discrepancies that are found. These comparisons have led to several characteristic results. Typically these include: (1) Better agreement among different types of remote measurements than between remote and in situ measurements. (2) More extinction derived from transmission measurements than from in situ measurements. (3) Larger aerosol absorption inferred from flux radiometry than from in situ measurements. Aerosol intensive properties derived from these closure studies have been combined with satellite-retrieved fields of optical depth to produce fields of regional radiative forcing. We show results for the North Atlantic derived from AVHRR optical depths and aerosol intensive properties from TARFOX and ACE-2. Companion papers show analogous, preliminary results for Asian-Pacific aerosols and results of SAFARI-2000 closure studies on African aerosols.

Russlee, Philip B.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Evaluation of Terms in the Water Vapor Budget Using Airborne Dial and In Situ Measurements from the Southern Great Plans 1997 Experiment

The Southern Great Plains (SGP97) field experiment was conducted in Oklahoma during June and July 1997 primarily to validate soil moisture retrieval algorithms using microwave radiometer measurements from aircraft as well as in situ surface measurements. One important objective of the SGP97 experiment plan was to examine the effect of soil moisture on the evolution of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) and clouds over the Southern Great Plains during the warm season. To support boundary layer studies during SGP97. the NASA Langley Research Center's Lidar Atmospheric Sensing Experiment (LASE) was flown on a NASA-P3 aircraft in conjunction with the Electronically Scanned Thinned Array Radiometer (ESTAR). The LASE instrument is an airborne, downward-looking differential absorption lidar (DIAL) system capable of measuring water vapor concentration as well as aerosol backscatter with high horizontal and vertical resolution in the ABL. Here, we will demonstrate how the LASE data can be used to determine water vapor statistics and most of the water vapor budget terms in the ABL. This information can then be related to spatial variations in soil moisture and the surface energy budget. The extensive surface and aircraft in situ measurements conducted during SGP97 provide information on the ABL that cannot be retrieved from the LASE data alone and also offer an excellent opportunity to validate the remote water vapor budget measurements with LASE.

Senff, Christoph J.↗
NASA NTRS1992

A millimeter-wave radiometer for detecting microbursts

This paper describes a millimeter-wave radiometer for the detection of wind shear from airborne platforms or at airport terminals. This proposed instrument will operate near the group of atmospheric oxygen absorptions centered near 60 GHz, which it will use to sense temperature from a distance. The instrument will use two channels to provide two different temperature measurements, providing the basis for solution of two equations in two unknowns, which are range to the wind shear plume and its temperature. A third channel will measure ambient atmospheric temperature. Depending on the temperature difference between the wind-shear plume and ambient, the standard deviation of range measurement accuracy is expected to be about 1 km at 5 km range, while the temperature measurement standard deviation will be about one-fourth the temperature difference between plume and ambient at this range. The instrument is expected to perform usefully at ranges up to 10 km, giving adequate warning of the presence of wind shear even for high performance jet aircraft. Other atmospheric hazards which might be detected by this radiometer include aircraft wakes and vortices, clear-air turbulence, and wind rotors, although the latter two phenomena would be detected by an airborne version of the instrument. A separate radiometer channel will be provided in the proposed instrument to detect aircraft wakes and vortices based on perturbation of the spectrum of microscopic atmospheric temperature fluctuations caused by the passage of large aircraft.

Mcmillan, Robert↗
NASA NTRS1979

Comparison of 2.8- and 21-cm microwave radiometer observations over soils with emission model calculations

An airborne experiment was conducted under NASA auspices to test the feasibility of detecting soil moisture by microwave remote sensing techniques over agricultural fields near Phoenix, Arizona at midday of April 5, 1974 and at dawn of the following day. Extensive ground data were obtained from 96 bare, sixteen hectare fields. Observations made using a scanning (2.8 cm) and a nonscanning (21 cm) radiometer were compared with the predictions of a radiative transfer emission model. It is shown that (1) the emitted intensity at both wavelengths correlates best with the near surface moisture, (2) surface roughness is found to more strongly affect the degree of polarization than the emitted intensity, (3) the slope of the intensity-moisture curves decreases in going from day to dawn, and (4) increased near surface moisture at dawn is characterized by increased polarization of emissions. The results of the experiment indicate that microwave techniques can be used to observe the history of the near surface moisture. The subsurface history must be inferred from soil physics models which use microwave results as boundary conditions.

Burke, W. J.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Developing an Aircraft-Based Angular Distribution Model of Solar Reflection from Wildfire Smoke to Aid Satellite-Based Radiative Flux Estimation

This study examines the angular distribution of scattered solar radiation associated with wildfire smoke aerosols observed over boreal forests in Canada during the ARCTAS (Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites) campaign. First, it estimates smoke radiative parameters (550 nm optical depth of 3.9 and single scattering albedo of 0.90) using quasi-simultaneous multiangular and multispectral airborne measurements by the Cloud Absorption Radiometer (CAR). Next, the paper estimates the broadband top-of-atmosphere radiances that a satellite instrument such as the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) could have observed, given the narrowband CAR measurements made from an aircraft circling about a kilometer above the smoke layer. This estimation includes both an atmospheric correction that accounts for the atmosphere above the aircraft and a narrowband-to-broadband conversion. The angular distribution of estimated radiances is found to be substantially different than the angular model used in the operational data processing of CERES observations over the same area. This is because the CERES model is a monthly average model that was constructed using observations taken under smoke-free conditions. Finally, a sensitivity analysis shows that the estimated angular distribution remains accurate for a fairly wide range of smoke and underlying surface parameters. Overall, results from this work suggest that airborne CAR measurements can bring some substantial improvements in the accuracy of satellite-based radiative flux estimates.

Varnai, Tamas↗
NASA NTRS2004

EOS Aqua AMSR-E Arctic Sea Ice Validation Program: Intercomparison Between Modeled and Measured Sea Ice Brightness Temperatures

During March 2003, an extensive field campaign was conducted near Barrow, Alaska to validate AQUA Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) sea ice products. Field, airborne and satellite data were collected over three different types of sea ice: 1) first year ice with little deformation, 2) first year ice with various amounts of deformation and 3) mixed first year ice and multi-year ice with various degrees of deformation. The validation plan relies primarily on comparisons between satellite, aircraft flights and ground-based measurements. Although these efforts are important, key aspects such as the effects of atmospheric conditions, snow properties, surface roughness, melt processes, etc on the sea ice algorithms are not sufficiently well understood or documented. To improve our understanding of these effects, we combined the detailed, in-situ data collection from the 2003 field campaign with radiance modeling using a radiative transfer model to simulate the top of the atmosphere AMSR brightness temperatures. This study reports on the results of the simulations for a variety of snow and ice types and compares the results with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Environmental Technology Laboratory Polarimetric Scanning Radiometer (NOAA) (ETL) (PSR) microwave radiometer that was flown on the NASA P-3.

Stroeve, J.↗
NASA NTRS1981

Modulated infrared radiant source

A modulated, infrared radiant energy source was developed to calibrate an airborne nadir-viewing pressure modulated radiometer to be used to detect from Earth orbit trace gases in the troposphere. The technique used an 8 cm long, 0.005 cm diameter platinum-iridium wire as an isothermal, thin line radiant energy source maintained at 1200 K. A + or - 20 K signal, oscillating at controllable frequencies from dc to 20 Hz, was superimposed on it. This periodic variation of the line source energy was used to verify the pressure modulated radiometer's capability to distinguish between the signal variations caused by the Earth's background surface and the signal from the atmospheric gases of interest.

Stewart, W. F.↗