Deriving AMVs from Geostationary Satellite Images Using Optical Flow Algorithm Based on Polynomial Expansion

An optical flow algorithm based on polynomial expansion (OFAPE) was used to derive atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) from geostationary satellite images. In OFAPE, there are two parameters that can affect the AMV results: the sizes of the expansion window and optimization window. They should be determined according to the temporal interval and spatial resolution of satellite images. A helpful experiment was conducted for selecting those sizes. The limitations of window sizes can cause loss of strong wind speed, and an image-pyramid scheme was used to overcome this problem. Determining the heights of AMVs for semitransparent cloud pixels (STCPs) is challenging work in AMV derivation. In this study, two-dimensional histograms (H2Ds) between infrared brightness temperatures (6.7- and 10.8-μm channels) formed from a long time series of cloud images were used to identify the STCPs and to estimate their actual temperatures/heights. The results obtained from H2Ds were contrasted with CloudSat radar reflectivity and CALIPSO cloud-feature mask data. Finally, in order to verify the algorithm adaptability, three-month AMVs (JJA 2013) were calculated and compared with the wind fields of ERA data and the NOAA/ESRL radiosonde observations in three aspects: speed, direction, and vector difference.