• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.5_1
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• pp.599-605
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• 2017

Accurate cloud discrimination in satellite images strongly affects accuracy of remotely sensed parameter produced using it. Especially, cloud contaminated pixel over ocean is one of the major error factors such as Sea Surface Temperature (SST), ocean color, and chlorophyll-a retrievals,so accurate cloud detection is essential process and it can lead to understand ocean circulation. However, static threshold method using real-time algorithm such as Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) can't fully explained reflectance variability over ocean as a function of relative positions between the sun - sea surface - satellite. In this paper, we assembled a reflectance spectral library as a function of Solar Zenith Angle (SZA) and Viewing Zenith Angle (VZA) from ocean surface reflectance with clear sky condition of Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) identified by NOAA's cloud products and spectral library is used for applying the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) to detect cloud pixels. We compared qualitatively between AHI cloud property and our results and it showed that AHI cloud property had general tendency toward overestimation and wrongly detected clear as unknown at high SZA. We validated by visual inspection with coincident imagery and it is generally appropriate.

• 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 Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.5_4
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• pp.1179-1194
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• 2020

This study investigates the feasibility of three algorithms, K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN), Random Forest (RF) and Neural Network (NN), for estimating the air temperature of an unobserved area where the weather station is not installed. The satellite image were obtained from Landsat-8 and MODIS Aqua/Terra acquired in 2019, and the meteorological ground weather data were from AWS/ASOS data of Korea Meteorological Administration and Korea Forest Service. In addition, in order to improve the estimation accuracy, a digital surface model, solar radiation, aspect and slope were used. The accuracy assessment of machine learning methods was performed by calculating the statistics of R² (determination coefficient) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) through 10-fold cross-validation and the estimated values were compared for each target area. As a result, the neural network algorithm showed the most stable result among the three algorithms with R² = 0.805 and RMSE = 0.508. The neural network algorithm was applied to each data set on Landsat imagery scene. It was possible to generate an mean air temperature map from June to September 2019 and confirmed that detailed air temperature information could be estimated. The result is expected to be utilized for national disaster safety management such as heat wave response policies and heat island mitigation research.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.555-568
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• 2013

Atmospheric optical thickness during nighttime was estimated in this study using analysis on the images of the moon taken from commercial digital camera. Basically the Langely Regression method was applied to the observations of the moon for the cloudless and optically stable sky conditions. The spectral response functions for the red(R), green(G), and blue(B) channels were employed to derive effective wavelength centers of each channel for the observations of the moon, and the correspondent Rayleigh optical thickness were also calculated. Aerosol optical thickness (AOT) was calculated by subtracting Rayleigh optical thickness from the atmospheric optical thickness derived from the Langley regression method. As there are only handful of nighttime AOT observations, the AOT from the moon observations was compared with the AOT from sun-photometers and the MODIS satellite sensor, which was taken several hours before the moon observations of this study. As a result, the values of AOT from moon observations agree with those from sun-photometers and MODIS within 0.1 for the R, G, B channels of the digital camera. On the other hand, ${\AA}$ngstr$\ddot{o}$m Exponent seems to be subject to larger errors due to its sensitiveness to the spectral errors of AOT. Nevertheless, the results of this study indicate that the method reported in this study is promising as it can provide nighttime AOT relatively easily with a low cost instrument like digital camera. More observations and analyses are warranted to attain improved nighttime AOT observations in the future.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.73-86
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• 2016

In this study, an algorithm to estimate Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) over small cities during nighttime has been developed by using the radiance from artificial light sources in small cities measured from Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor's Day/Night Band (DNB) aboard the Suomi-National Polar Partnership (Suomi-NPP) satellite. The algorithm is based on Beer's extinction law with the light sources from the artificial lights over small cities. AOT is retrieved for cloud-free pixels over individual cities, and cloud-screening was conducted by using the measurements from M-bands of VIIRS at infrared wavelengths. The retrieved nighttime AOT is compared with the aerosol products from MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard Terra and Aqua satellites. As a result, the correlation coefficients over individual cities range from around 0.6 and 0.7 between the retrieved nighttime AOT and MODIS AOT with Root-Mean-Squared Difference (RMSD) ranged from 0.14 to 0.18. In addition, sensitivity tests were conducted for the factors affecting the nighttime AOT to estimate the range of uncertainty in the nighttime AOT retrievals. The results of this study indicate that it is promising to infer AOT using the DNB measaurements over small cities in Korea at night. After further development and refinement in the future, the developed retrieval algorithm is expected to produce nighttime aerosol information which is not operationally available over Korea.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.305-314
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• 2016

In this study, a quantitative assessment was carried out in order to identify the agricultural drought in time and space using the Terra MODIS remote sensing data for the agricultural drought. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) were selected by MOD13A3 image which shows the changes in vegetation conditions. The land cover classification was made to show only vegetation excluding water and urbanized areas in order to collect the land information efficiently by Type1 of MCD12Q1 images. NDVI and EVI index calculated using land cover classification indicates the strong seasonal tendency. Therefore, standardized Vegetation Stress Index Anomaly (VSIA) of EVI were used to estimated the medium-scale regions in Korea during the extreme drought year 2001. In addition, the agricultural drought damages were investigated in the country's past, and it was calculated based on the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) using the data of the ground stations. The VSIA were compared with SPI based on historical drought in Korea and application for drought assessment was made by temporal and spatial correlation analysis to diagnose the properties of agricultural droughts in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.189-204
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• 2018

This study has developed a forest fire occurrence probability model for inaccessible areas such as North Korea and Demilitarized Zone and we have developed a real-time forest fire danger rating system that can be used in fire-related works. There are limitations on the research that it is impossible to conduct site investigation for data acquisition and verification for forest fire weather index model and system development. To solve this problem, we estimated the fire spots in the areas where access is impossible by using MODIS satellite data with scientific basis. Using the past meteorological reanalysis data(5㎞ resolution) produced by the Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA) on the extracted fires, the meteorological characteristics of the fires were extracted and made database. The meteorological factors extracted from the forest fire ignition points in the inaccessible areas are statistically correlated with the forest fire occurrence and the weather factors and the logistic regression model that can estimate the forest fires occurrence(fires 1 and non-fores 0). And used to calculate the forest fire weather index(FWI). The results of the statistical analysis show that the logistic models(p<0.01) strongly depends on maximum temperature, minimum relative humidity, effective humidity and average wind speed. The logistic regression model constructed in this study showed a relatively high accuracy of 66%. These findings may be beneficial to the policy makers in Republic of Korea(ROK) and Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK) for the prevention of forest fires.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.41-46
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• 2011

Reliable information on the surface solar radiation is indispensable for rebuilding food production system in the famine plagued North Korea. However, transfer of the related modeling technology of South Korea is not possible simply because raw data such as solar radiation or sunshine duration are not available. The objective of this study is restoring solar radiation data at 27 synoptic stations in North Korea by using satellite remote sensing data. We derived relationships between MODIS radiation estimates and the observed solar radiation at 18 locations in South Korea. The relationships were used to adjust the MODIS based radiation data and to restore solar radiation data at those pixels corresponding to the 27 North Korean synoptic stations. Inverse distance weighted averaging of the restored solar radiation data resulted in gridded surfaces of monthly solar radiation for 4 decadal periods (1983-1990, 1991-2000 and 2001-2010), respectively. For a direct application of these products, we produced solar irradiance estimates for each sub-grid cell with a 30 m spacing based on a sun-slope geometry. These products are expected to assist planning of the North Korean agriculture and, if combined with the already prepared South Korean data, can be used for climate change impact assessment across the whole Peninsula.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.523-530
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• 2015

A Multiple Regression Method (MRM) is used for the first time with Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data to estimate formaldehyde (HCHO) Vertical Column Density (VCD). For a 3.5-year period from January 2005 through July 2008, HCHO VCD estimation is investigated in cities over Asia in two categorized areas: (1) Major cities in Northeast Asia (Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo), (2) Major cities in Southeast Asia (New Delhi, Dhaka, and Bangkok). In the Major cities in Northeast Asia, there are good agreements between HCHO estimated by the multiple linear regression method ($HCHO_{MRM}$) and HCHO measured by OMI ($HCHO_{OMI}$) (0.78 < $R^2$ < 0.82). However, in Major cities in Southeast Asia, there were poor agreements between $HCHO_{OMI}$ and $HCHO_{MRM}$ (0.24 < $R^2$ < 0.39). In addition, an unbiased assessment of the MRM performance using modeling and validation groups shows that the performance of the MRM based on separate modeling and validation groups is comparable to that using all the data for deriving Multiple Regression Equations (MREs). This study demonstrates that MRM can be an alternative tool for HCHO estimation in certain areas over Asia.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_1
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• pp.1255-1272
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• 2023

Satellite-based chlorophyll-a concentration, produced as a long-term time series, is crucial for global climate change research. The production of data without gaps through the merging of time-synthesized or multi-satellite data is essential. However, studies related to satellite-based chlorophyll-a concentration in the waters around the Korean Peninsula have mainly focused on evaluating seasonal characteristics or proposing algorithms suitable for research areas using a single ocean color sensor. In this study, a merging dataset of remote sensing reflectance from the geostationary sensor GOCI-II and polar-orbiting sensors (MODIS, VIIRS, OLCI) was utilized to achieve high spatial coverage of chlorophyll-a concentration in the waters around the Korean Peninsula. The spatial coverage in the results of this study increased by approximately 30% compared to polar-orbiting sensor data, effectively compensating for gaps caused by clouds. Additionally, we aimed to quantitatively assess accuracy through comparison with global chlorophyll-a composite data provided by Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI) and GlobColour, along with in-situ observation data. However, due to the limited number of in-situ observation data, we could not provide statistically significant results. Nevertheless, we observed a tendency for underestimation compared to global data. Furthermore, for the evaluation of practical applications in response to marine disasters such as red tides, we qualitatively compared our results with a case of a red tide in the East Sea in 2013. The results showed similarities to OC-CCI rather than standalone geostationary sensor results. Through this study, we plan to use the generated data for future research in artificial intelligence models for prediction and anomaly utilization. It is anticipated that the results will be beneficial for monitoring chlorophyll-a events in the coastal waters around Korea.