• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.117-136
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• 2019

In this study, a hybrid-type of day fog detection algorithm (DFDA) was developed based on the optical and textural characteristics of fog top, using the Himawari-8 /Advanced Himawari Imager data. Supplementary data, such as temperatures of numerical weather prediction model and sea surface temperatures of operational sea surface temperature and sea ice analysis, were used for fog detection. And 10 minutes data from visibility meter from the Korea Meteorological Administration were used for a quantitative verification of the fog detection results. Normalized albedo of fog top was utilized to distinguish between fog and other objects such as clouds, land, and oceans. The normalized local standard deviation of the fog surface and temperature difference between fog top and air temperature were also assessed to separate the fog from low cloud. Initial threshold values (ITVs) for the fog detection elements were selected using hat-shaped threshold values through frequency distribution analysis of fog cases.And the ITVs were optimized through the iteration method in terms of maximization of POD and minimization of FAR. The visual inspection and a quantitative verification using a visibility meter showed that the DFDA successfully detected a wide range of fog. The quantitative verification in both training and verification cases, the average POD (FAR) was 0.75 (0.41) and 0.74 (0.46), respectively. However, sophistication of the threshold values of the detection elements, as well as utilization of other channel data are necessary as the fog detection levels vary for different fog cases(POD: 0.65-0.87, FAR: 0.30-0.53).

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.543-557
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• 2021

Because aerosols have different spectral characteristics according to the size and composition of the particle and to the satellite sensors, a comparative analysis of aerosol products from various satellite sensors is required. In South Korea, however, a comprehensive study for the comparison of various official satellite AOD (Aerosol Optical Depth) products for a long period is not easily found. In this paper, we aimed to assess the performance of the AOD products from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite), Himawari-8, and Sentinel-3 by referring to the AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) sun photometer observations for the period between January 2015 and December 2019. Seasonal and geographical characteristics of the accuracy of satellite AOD were also analyzed. The MODIS products, which were accumulated for a long time and optimized by the new MAIAC (Multiangle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction) algorithm, showed the best accuracy (CC=0.836) and were followed by the products from VIIRS and Himawari-8. On the other hand, Sentinel-3 AOD did not appear to have a good quality because it was recently launched and not sufficiently optimized yet, according to ESA (European Space Agency). The AOD of MODIS, VIIRS, and Himawari-8 did not show a significant difference in accuracy according to season and to urban vs. non-urban regions, but the mixed pixel problem was partly found in a few coastal regions. Because AOD is an essential component for atmospheric correction, the result of this study can be a reference to the future work for the atmospheric correction for the Korean CAS (Compact Advanced Satellite) series.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.6_1
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• pp.1029-1040
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• 2017

Wildfires release a large amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. Fire radiative power (FRP) data obtained from geostationary satellites can play an important role for tracing the GHGs. This paper describes an estimation of the Himawari-8 FRP and fire emissions for Samcheock and Gangnueng wildfire in 6 May 2017. The FRP estimated using Himawari-8 well represented the temporal variability of the fire intensity, which cannot be captured by MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) because of its limited temporal resolution. Fire emissions calculated from the Himwari-8 FRP showed a very similar time-series pattern compared with the AirKorea observations, but 1 to 3 hour's time-lag existed because of the distance between the station and the wildfire location. The estimated emissions were also compared with those of a previous study which analyzed fire damages using high-resolution images. They almost coincided with 12% difference for Samcheock and 2% difference for Gangneung, demonstrating a reliability of the estimation of fire emissions using our Himawari-8 FRP without high-resolution images. This study can be a reference for estimating fire emissions using the current and forthcoming geostationary satellites in East Asia and can contribute to improving accuracy of meteorological products such as AOD (aerosol optical depth).

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.28-36
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• 2023

Solar radiation that is measured at relatively small number of weather stations is one of key inputs to crop models for estimation of crop productivity. Solar radiation products derived from GK-2A and Himawari 8 satellite data have become available, which would allow for preparation of input data to crop models, especially for assessment of crop productivity under an agrivoltaic system where crop and power can be produced at the same time. The objective of this study was to compare the degree of agreement between the solar radiation products obtained from those satellite data. The sub hourly products for solar radiation were collected to prepare their daily summary for the period from May to October in 2020 during which both satellite products for solar radiation were available. Root mean square error (RMSE) and its normalized error (NRMSE) were determined for daily sum of solar radiation. The cumulative values of solar radiation for the study period were also compared to represent the impact of the errors for those products on crop growth simulations. It was found that the data product from the Himawari 8 satellite tended to have smaller values of RMSE and NRMSE than that from the GK-2A satellite. The Himawari 8 satellite product had smaller errors at a large number of weather stations when the cumulative solar radiation was compared with the measurements. This suggests that the use of Himawari 8 satellite products would cause less uncertainty than that of GK2-A products for estimation of crop yield. This merits further studies to apply the Himawari 8 satellites to estimation of solar power generation as well as crop yield under an agrivoltaic system.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.681-691
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• 2016

Using various satellite measurements in UV, visible and IR, diverse algorithms to retrieve aerosol information have been developed and operated to date. Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) onboard the Himawari 8 weather satellite was launched in 2014 and has 16 channels from visible to Thermal InfRared (TIR) in high temporal and spatial resolution. Using AHI, it is very valuable to retrieve aerosol optical properties over dark surface to demonstrate its capability. To retrieve aerosol optical properties using visible and Near InfRared (NIR) region, surface signal is very important to be removed which can be estimated using minimum reflectivity method. The estimated surface reflectance is then used to retrieve the aerosol optical properties through the inversion process. In this study, we retrieve the aerosol optical properties over dark surface, but not over bright surface such as clouds, desert and so on. Therefore, the bright surface was detected and masked using various infrared channels of AHI and spatial heterogeneity, Brightness Temperature Difference (BTD), etc. The retrieval result shows the correlation coefficient of 0.7 against AERONET, and the within the Expected Error (EE) of 49%. It is accurately retrieved even for low Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD). However, AOD tends to be underestimated over the Beijing Hefei area, where the surface reflectance using the minimum reflectance method is overestimated than the actual surface reflectance.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.502-517
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• 2019

Global warming and rapid climate change have long affected the characteristics of typhoons in the Northwest Pacific, which has induced increasing devastating disasters along the coastal regions of the Korean peninsula. Synthetic Aperature Radar (SAR), as one of the microwave sensors, makes it possible to produce high-resolution sea surface wind field around the typhoon under cloudy atmospheric conditions, which has been impossible to obtain the winds from satellite optical and infrared sensors. The Geophysical Model Functions (GMFs) for sea surface wind retrieval from SAR data requires the input of wind direction, which should be based on the accurate estimation of the center of the typhoon. This study estimated the typhoon centers using Sentinel-1A images to improve the problem of typhoon center detection method and to reflect it in retrieving the sea surface wind. The results were validated by comparing with the typhoon best track data provided by the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) and Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), and also by using infrared images of Himawari-8 satellite. The initial center position of the typhoon was determined by using VH polarization, thereby reducing the possibility of error. The detected center showed a difference of 23.76 km on average with the best track data of the four typhoons provided by the KMA and JMA. Compared to the typhoon center estimated by Himawari-8 satellite, the results showed an average spatial variation of 11.80 km except one typhoon located near land with a large difference of 58.73 km. This result suggests that high-resolution SAR images can be used to estimate the center and retrieve sea surface wind around typhoons.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_3
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• pp.1405-1423
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• 2021

Precipitation is one of the main factors that affect water and energy cycles, and its estimation plays a very important role in securing water resources and timely responding to water disasters. Satellite-based quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) has the advantage of covering large areas at high spatiotemporal resolution. In this study, machine learning-based rainfall intensity models were developed using Himawari-8 Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) water vapor channel (6.7 ㎛), infrared channel (10.8 ㎛), and weather radar Column Max (CMAX) composite data based on random forest (RF). The target variables were weather radar reflectivity (dBZ) and rainfall intensity (mm/hr) converted by the Z-R relationship. The results showed that the model which learned CMAX reflectivity produced the Critical Success Index (CSI) of 0.34 and the Mean-Absolute-Error (MAE) of 4.82 mm/hr. When compared to the GeoKompsat-2 and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN)-Cloud Classification System (CCS) rainfall intensity products, the accuracies improved by 21.73% and 10.81% for CSI, and 31.33% and 23.49% for MAE, respectively. The spatial distribution of the estimated rainfall intensity was much more similar to the radar data than the existing products.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_1
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• pp.861-870
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• 2021

In this study, fused Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) data were produced using AOD products from the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) onboard Communication, Oceanography and Meteorology Satellite (COMS)satellite and the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) onboard Himawari-8. Since the spatial resolution and the coordinate system between the satellite sensors are different, a preprocessing was first preceded. After that, using the level 1.5 AOD dataset of AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET), which is ground-based observation, correlations and trends between each satellite AOD and AERONET AOD were utilized to produce more accurate satellite AOD data than the originalsatellite AODs. The fused AOD were found to be more accurate than the originalsatellite AODs. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and mean bias of the fused AODs were calculated to be 0.13 and 0.05, respectively. We also compared errors of the fused AODs against those of the original GOCI AOD (RMSE: 0.15, mean bias: 0.11) and the original AHI AOD (RMSE: 0.15, mean bias: 0.05). It was confirmed that the fused AODs have betterspatial coverage than the original AODsin areas where there are no observations due to the presence of cloud from a single satellite.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.5_3
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• pp.979-995
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• 2023

As wildfires are difficult to predict, real-time monitoring is crucial for a timely response. Geostationary satellite images are very useful for active fire detection because they can monitor a vast area with high temporal resolution (e.g., 2 min). Existing satellite-based active fire detection algorithms detect thermal outliers using threshold values based on the statistical analysis of brightness temperature. However, the difficulty in establishing suitable thresholds for such threshold-based methods hinders their ability to detect fires with low intensity and achieve generalized performance. In light of these challenges, machine learning has emerged as a potential-solution. Until now, relatively simple techniques such as random forest, Vanilla convolutional neural network (CNN), and U-net have been applied for active fire detection. Therefore, this study proposed an active fire detection algorithm using state-of-the-art (SOTA) deep learning techniques using data from the Advanced Himawari Imager and evaluated it over East Asia and Australia. The SOTA model was developed by applying EfficientNet and lion optimizer, and the results were compared with the model using the Vanilla CNN structure. EfficientNet outperformed CNN with F1-scores of 0.88 and 0.83 in East Asia and Australia, respectively. The performance was better after using weighted loss, equal sampling, and image augmentation techniques to fix data imbalance issues compared to before the techniques were used, resulting in F1-scores of 0.92 in East Asia and 0.84 in Australia. It is anticipated that timely responses facilitated by the SOTA deep learning-based approach for active fire detection will effectively mitigate the damage caused by wildfires.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.161-167
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• 2021

This paper presents the method to quantitatively evaluate the uncertainty of the semi-empirical Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) model for Himawari-8/AHI. The uncertainty of BRDF modeling was affected by various issues such as assumption of model and number of observations, thus, it is difficult that evaluating the performance of BRDF modeling using simple uncertainty equations. Therefore, in this paper, Monte-Carlo method, which is most dependable method to analyze dynamic complex systems through iterative simulation, was used. The 1,000 input datasets for analyzing the uncertainty of BRDF modeling were generated using the Second Simulation of a Satellite Signal in the Solar Spectrum (6S) Radiative Transfer Model (RTM) simulation with MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) BRDF product. Then, we randomly selected data according to the number of observations from 4 to 35 in the input dataset and performed BRDF modeling using them. Finally, the uncertainty was calculated by comparing reproduced surface reflectance through the BRDF model and simulated surface reflectance using 6S RTM and expressed as bias and root-mean-square-error (RMSE). The bias was negative for all observations and channels, but was very small within 0.01. RMSE showed a tendency to decrease as the number of observations increased, and showed a stable value within 0.05 in all channels. In addition, our results show that when the viewing zenith angle is 40° or more, the RMSE tends to increase slightly. This information can be utilized in the uncertainty analysis of subsequently retrieved geophysical variables.