scholarly journals A Novel Approach for the Detection of Developing Thunderstorm Cells

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Müller ◽  
Stéphane Haussler ◽  
Matthias Jerg ◽  
Dirk Heizenreder

This study presents a novel approach for the early detection of developing thunderstorms. To date, methods for the detection of developing thunderstorms have usually relied on accurate Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs) for the estimation of the cooling rates of convective clouds, which correspond to the updraft strengths of the cloud objects. In this study, we present a method for the estimation of the updraft strength that does not rely on AMVs. The updraft strength is derived directly from the satellite observations in the SEVIRI water vapor channels. For this purpose, the absolute value of the vector product of spatio-temporal gradients of the SEVIRI water vapor channels is calculated for each satellite pixel, referred to as Normalized Updraft Strength (NUS). The main idea of the concept is that vertical updraft leads to NUS values significantly above zero, whereas horizontal cloud movement leads to NUS values close to zero. Thus, NUS is a measure of the strength of the vertical updraft and can be applied to distinguish between advection and convection. The performance of the method has been investigated for two summer periods in 2016 and 2017 by validation with lightning data. Values of the Critical Success Index (CSI) of about 66% for 2016 and 60% for 2017 demonstrate the good performance of the method. The Probability of Detection (POD) values for the base case are 81.8% for 2016 and 89.2% for 2017, respectively. The corresponding False Alarm Ratio (FAR) values are 22.6% (2016) and 36.4% (2017), respectively. In summary, the method has the potential to reduce forecast lead time significantly and can be quite useful in regions without a well-maintained radar network.

Author(s):  
Richard Mueller ◽  
Matthias Jerg ◽  
Stephane Haussler ◽  
Dirk Heizenreder

This study presents a novel approach for the early detection of developing thunderstorms. To date, methods for the detection of developing thunderstorms usually rely on accurate atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) for the estimation of cooling rate of convective clouds, which corresponds to the updraft strength of the cloud objects. In this study we present a method for the estimation of the updraft strength that does not rely on AMVs. The updraft strength is derived directly from the satellite observations in the SEVIRI water vapor channels. For this purpose the absolute value of the vector product of two vectors derived from the observed radiances emitted by the water vapor channels in 2 subsequent satellite images is calculated. The x and y components of the vectors consists of the temporal change of the spatial brightness temperature gradients in x- and y-direction, the z component consists of the temporal variation of the brightness temperature at pixel level. The absolute value of the vector product is referred to as normalized updraft strength (NUS). The performance of the method has been investigated for 2 summer periods in 2016 and 2017 by validation with lightning data. Values of the Critical Success Index (CSI) of about 66 % for the 2016 period and 62 % for the 2017 period demonstrate the good performance of the method. The POD values for the experiments with the highest CSI values are 90.3 for 2016 period and 87.6 for the 2017 period, respectively The corresponding FAR values are 28.2% (2016) and 32.5 % (2017), respectively. In summary, the method has the potential to reduce the forecast lead time significantly, and can be quite useful in regions without a well maintained radar network.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 1859-1874 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanggyun Lee ◽  
Hyangsun Han ◽  
Jungho Im ◽  
Eunna Jang ◽  
Myong-In Lee

Abstract. The detection of convective initiation (CI) is very important because convective clouds bring heavy rainfall and thunderstorms that typically cause severe socio-economic damage. In this study, deterministic and probabilistic CI detection models based on decision trees (DT), random forest (RF), and logistic regression (LR) were developed using Himawari-8 Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) data obtained from June to August 2016 over the Korean Peninsula. A total of 12 interest fields that contain brightness temperature, spectral differences of the brightness temperatures, and their time trends were used to develop CI detection models. While, in our study, the interest field of 11.2 µm Tb was considered the most crucial for detecting CI in the deterministic models and the probabilistic RF model, the trispectral difference, i.e. (8.6–11.2 µm)–(11.2–12.4 µm), was determined to be the most important one in the LR model. The performance of the four models varied by CI case and validation data. Nonetheless, the DT model typically showed higher probability of detection (POD), while the RF model produced higher overall accuracy (OA) and critical success index (CSI) and lower false alarm rate (FAR) than the other models. The CI detection of the mean lead times by the four models were in the range of 20–40 min, which implies that convective clouds can be detected 30 min in advance, before precipitation intensity exceeds 35 dBZ over the Korean Peninsula in summer using the Himawari-8 AHI data.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 3871
Author(s):  
Ali Hamza ◽  
Muhammad Naveed Anjum ◽  
Muhammad Jehanzeb Masud Cheema ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
Arslan Afzal ◽  
...  

In this study, the performances of four satellite-based precipitation products (IMERG-V06 Final-Run, TRMM-3B42V7, SM2Rain-ASCAT, and PERSIANN-CDR) were assessed with reference to the measurements of in-situ gauges at daily, monthly, seasonal, and annual scales from 2010 to 2017, over the Hindu Kush Mountains of Pakistan. The products were evaluated over the entire domain and at point-to-pixel scales. Different evaluation indices (Correlation Coefficient (CC), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Bias, and relative Bias (rBias)) and categorical indices (False Alarm Ration (FAR), Critical Success Index (CSI), Success Ratio (SR), and Probability of Detection (POD)) were used to assess the performances of the products considered in this study. Our results indicated the following. (1) IMERG-V06 and PERSIANN capably tracked the spatio-temporal variation of precipitation over the studied region. (2) All satellite-based products were in better agreement with the reference data on the monthly scales than on daily time scales. (3) On seasonal scale, the precipitation detection skills of IMERG-V06 and PERSIANN-CDR were better than those of SM2Rain-ASCAT and TRMM-3B42V7. In all seasons, overall performance of IMERG-V06 and PERSIANN-CDR was better than TRMM-3B42V7 and SM2Rain-ASCAT. (4) However, all products were uncertain in detecting light and moderate precipitation events. Consequently, we recommend the use of IMERG-V06 and PERSIANN-CDR products for subsequent hydro-meteorological studies in the Hindu Kush range.


Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 844
Author(s):  
Robertas Poškas ◽  
Arūnas Sirvydas ◽  
Vladislavas Kulkovas ◽  
Povilas Poškas

Waste heat recovery from flue gas based on water vapor condensation is an important issue as the waste heat recovery significantly increases the efficiency of the thermal power units. General principles for designing of this type of heat exchangers are known rather well; however, investigations of the local characteristics necessary for the optimization of those heat exchangers are very limited. Investigations of water vapor condensation from biofuel flue gas in the model of a vertical condensing heat exchanger were performed without and with water injection into a calorimetric tube. During the base-case investigations, no water was injected into the calorimetric tube. The results showed that the humidity and the temperature of inlet flue gas have a significant effect on the local and average heat transfer. For some regimes, the initial part of the condensing heat exchanger was not effective in terms of heat transfer because there the flue gas was cooled by convection until its temperature reached the dew point temperature. The results also showed that, at higher Reynolds numbers, there was an increase in the length of the convection prevailing region. After that region, a sudden increase was observed in heat transfer due to water vapor condensation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanzeela Mitha ◽  
Maria Pour

AbstractA novel approach to linear array antennas with adaptive inter-element spacing is presented for the first time. The main idea is based upon electronically displacing the phase center location of the antenna elements, which determine their relative coordinates in the array configuration. This is realized by employing dual-mode microstrip patch antennas as a constitutive element, whose phase center location can be displaced from its physical center by simultaneously exciting two modes. The direction and the amount of displacement is controlled by the amplitude and phase of the modes at the element level. This in turn facilitates reconfiguring the inter-element spacing at the array level. For instance, a uniformly-spaced array could be electronically transformed into a non-uniform one without any mechanical means. The proposed idea is demonstrated in two- and three-element linear antenna arrays. The technique has the potential to control the radiation characteristics such as sidelobe levels, position of the nulls, and the beamwidths in small arrays, which are useful for adaptively controlling the array performance in emerging wireless communication systems and radars.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1061
Author(s):  
Thanh Thi Luong ◽  
Judith Pöschmann ◽  
Rico Kronenberg ◽  
Christian Bernhofer

Convective rainfall can cause dangerous flash floods within less than six hours. Thus, simple approaches are required for issuing quick warnings. The flash flood guidance (FFG) approach pre-calculates rainfall levels (thresholds) potentially causing critical water levels for a specific catchment. Afterwards, only rainfall and soil moisture information are required to issue warnings. This study applied the principle of FFG to the Wernersbach Catchment (Germany) with excellent data coverage using the BROOK90 water budget model. The rainfall thresholds were determined for durations of 1 to 24 h, by running BROOK90 in “inverse” mode, identifying rainfall values for each duration that led to exceedance of critical discharge (fixed value). After calibrating the model based on its runoff, we ran it in hourly mode with four precipitation types and various levels of initial soil moisture for the period 1996–2010. The rainfall threshold curves showed a very high probability of detection (POD) of 91% for the 40 extracted flash flood events in the study period, however, the false alarm rate (FAR) of 56% and the critical success index (CSI) of 42% should be improved in further studies. The proposed adjusted FFG approach has the potential to provide reliable support in flash flood forecasting.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 690
Author(s):  
Tao Wu ◽  
Huiqing Shen ◽  
Jianxin Qin ◽  
Longgang Xiang

Identifying stops from GPS trajectories is one of the main concerns in the study of moving objects and has a major effect on a wide variety of location-based services and applications. Although the spatial and non-spatial characteristics of trajectories have been widely investigated for the identification of stops, few studies have concentrated on the impacts of the contextual features, which are also connected to the road network and nearby Points of Interest (POIs). In order to obtain more precise stop information from moving objects, this paper proposes and implements a novel approach that represents a spatio-temproal dynamics relationship between stopping behaviors and geospatial elements to detect stops. The relationship between the candidate stops based on the standard time–distance threshold approach and the surrounding environmental elements are integrated in a complex way (the mobility context cube) to extract stop features and precisely derive stops using the classifier classification. The methodology presented is designed to reduce the error rate of detection of stops in the work of trajectory data mining. It turns out that 26 features can contribute to recognizing stop behaviors from trajectory data. Additionally, experiments on a real-world trajectory dataset further demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in improving the accuracy of identifying stops from trajectories.


Author(s):  
XIAN WU ◽  
JIANHUANG LAI ◽  
PONG C. YUEN

This paper proposes a novel approach for video-shot transition detection using spatio-temporal saliency. Both temporal and spatial information are combined to generate a saliency map, and features are available based on the change of saliency. Considering the context of shot changes, a statistical detector is constructed to determine all types of shot transitions by the minimization of the detection-error probability simultaneously under the same framework. The evaluation performed on videos of various content types demonstrates that the proposed approach outperforms a more recent method and two publicly available systems, namely VideoAnnex and VCM.


2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Teller ◽  
Z. Levin

Abstract. Numerical experiments were carried out using the Tel-Aviv University 2-D cloud model to investigate the effects of increased concentrations of Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN), giant CCN (GCCN) and Ice Nuclei (IN) on the development of precipitation and cloud structure in mixed-phase sub-tropical convective clouds. In order to differentiate between the contribution of the aerosols and the meteorology, all simulations were conducted with the same meteorological conditions. The results show that under the same meteorological conditions, polluted clouds (with high CCN concentrations) produce less precipitation than clean clouds (with low CCN concentrations), the initiation of precipitation is delayed and the lifetimes of the clouds are longer. GCCN enhance the total precipitation on the ground in polluted clouds but they have no noticeable effect on cleaner clouds. The increased rainfall due to GCCN is mainly a result of the increased graupel mass in the cloud, but it only partially offsets the decrease in rainfall due to pollution (increased CCN). The addition of more effective IN, such as mineral dust particles, reduces the total amount of precipitation on the ground. This reduction is more pronounced in clean clouds than in polluted ones. Polluted clouds reach higher altitudes and are wider than clean clouds and both produce wider clouds (anvils) when more IN are introduced. Since under the same vertical sounding the polluted clouds produce less rain, more water vapor is left aloft after the rain stops. In our simulations about 3.5 times more water evaporates after the rain stops from the polluted cloud as compared to the clean cloud. The implication is that much more water vapor is transported from lower levels to the mid troposphere under polluted conditions, something that should be considered in climate models.


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