Abstract
Fog estimation from the satellite is crucial as the fog has a significant impact on the road, rail, and air traffic, thereby influencing the economy and human life. To understand and deal with several influence factors, spatially and temporally high-resolution fog information is required. This study has attempted to develop an algorithm for daytime fog retrieval from INSAT-3D Imager data over the Indian region. The operational algorithm for detecting fog using INSAT-3D data provides low stratus cloud and fog as its product. The operational product does not provide any distinction between low stratus clouds and fog. The segregation of fog from low-level stratus clouds is still an open area. This work proposes a methodology to segregate low stratus clouds from fog. The work presents a two-step approach. In the first step, it implements the methodology proposed by Chaurasia and Gohil (2015), for the detection of daytime low stratus clouds/fog using INSAT-3D data, and in the second step, it proposes a methodology to segregate fog from low stratus clouds. The daytime fog retrieval methodology primarily makes use of visible and thermal channels to distinguish fog from high/mid-level clouds, snow, and bright land area. However, the fog and low-level stratus clouds cannot be segregated using only visible and thermal channels, as the top of both fog and low-level stratus appears similar in these two channels. In the present study, an attempt has been made to separate fog from low stratus clouds using a wind threshold. The final segregated fog product from the proposed methodology has been validated with ground observation. The percentage of detection is observed to be 86% with a false alarm of 4% for the season December 2018–January 2019. The fog products with and without wind threshold have also been compared with INSAT-3D operational fog products and MODIS true color composite images. The comparison has shown the robustness of the algorithm in segregating the fog and low-level stratus clouds.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the MOSDAC team at Space Application Centre, Ahmedabad for making INSAT-3D Imager data available online. The authors also thankfully acknowledge the ERA-interim team for providing a reanalysis of wind data. The authors would like to thank Iowa Environmental Mesonet, Iowa State University for providing ground station METAR data for visibility information, and NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) for its worldview tool.
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Jindal, P., Shukla, M.V., Mitra, D. et al. A New Methodology for Detection of Fog over the Indian Region using INSAT-3D Data. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 51, 1–7 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-022-01587-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-022-01587-8