ABSTRACT: A technique is presented for determining rainfall areas through the simultaneous use of infrared and near-infrared satellite data. These data are a reduced-resolution version of the original AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) images from the satellite NOAA-12. The scheme developed was used in order to differentiate among clear sky (or with very few clouds present), raining clouds and non-raining clouds for a mid-latitude region over Argentina. The scheme was developed by applying clustering and discriminant analysis to the maxima obtained from 2-dimensional histograms in the infrared and near-infrared domain. Warm-season data during daylight hours were used to develop and test the scheme. It was tested on 9 dates, and comparison of the classification results with reports from ground stations was encouraging.

KEY WORDS: Satellite . AVHRR images . Cloud classification . Rainfall . Clustering analysis . Rainfall areas . Discriminant analysis

Published in CR Vol. 5, No. 3 (1995) on December 7
ISSN: 0936-577X. Copyright © Inter-Research, Oldendorf/Luhe, 1995