Automatic Detection for Day and Night Time Dust Storms Using MODIS bands.

Abstract

  Dust storms are one of the natural hazards whose incidence has increased in the recent years over Sahara desert, Australia and northern China. Thus, it is important to know the causation, movement and radiation effects of dust storms. Satellite remote sensing is the most common method for monitoring Dust Storms but its use over sandy ground is still limited as they have similar characteristics. Many researchers have studied the detection of dust storms during daytime in a number of different regions of the world including China, Australia, America, and North Africa using a variety of satellite data. However, there have been fewer studies for detecting dust storms at night. The key elements of this study are to use a back-propagation artificial neural network with Brightness Temperature of band 31 and four Brightness Temperature Differences calculated using data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers on the Terra and Aqua satellites to develop a method for detecting dust storms during both day and night. Results have shown that the method can detect dust storms at both day and night and also over different land surfaces