MATH Seminar
| Title: Mathematics for Remote Sensing and Earth Observation |
|---|
| Seminar: Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing |
| Speaker: Cristina Sgattoni of CNR Florence |
| Contact: Matthias Chung, matthias.chung@emory.edu |
| Date: 2023-10-19 at 10:00AM |
| Venue: MSC N306 |
| Download Flyer |
| Abstract: FORUM (Far-infrared Outgoing Radiation Understanding and Monitoring) is a satellite mission selected in 2019 as the ninth ESA (European Space Agency) Earth Explorer mission. FORUM will provide interferometric measurements in the spectral interval encompassing the Far-InfraRed (FIR) part of the spectrum, responsible for about 50% of the outgoing longwave flux lost by our planet into space. While more accurate measurements of the Top Of the Atmosphere (TOA) resolved spectrum in the FIR are necessary for reducing uncertainty in climate models, existing instruments are insufficient, necessitating the use of innovative computational techniques. The new observations will also improve the knowledge of several atmospheric variables, such as tropospheric water vapor, ice cloud properties and, especially, surface emissivity in the FIR. In the early stages of the mission development, an End-to-End Simulator (E2ES) was devised to demonstrate proof-of-concept and to evaluate the impact of instrument characteristics and scene conditions on the accuracy of the reconstructed atmospheric properties. The atmospheric components retrieval is obtained through inversion of the radiative transfer equation, in which the atmospheric state that best reconstructs the simulated measured spectrum is determined at each step. This is a severely ill-conditioned problem and requires the application of the Optimal Estimation (OE) approach, a specialized Tikhonov regularization scheme based on a Bayesian formulation. Additional regularization, based on the Iterative Variable Strength (IVS), is often necessary to regularize unphysical oscillations that may arise during the retrieval process. In the first part of this seminar, I will focus on the retrieval of the surface emissivity, in particular on the choice of the retrieval grid step and the IVS parameters, using the FORUM simulated measurements in different latitude bands. In the second part, I will discuss the sensitivity of the FORUM simulated measurements to surface emissivity across all latitudes in clear sky conditions and in the presence of clouds in Antarctica. Moreover, I will present procedures for the assimilation of observed data and Bayesian techniques for deriving a database of surface emissivity estimates to adopt as apriori data in the OE procedure. Finally, I will conclude by introducing my future work at Emory, which consists of the use of a fast neural network approach combined with autoencoders to face both the radiative transfer problem and its inversion. |
See All Seminars