Automatic Tracking and Characterization of Cumulonimbus Clouds from FY-2C Geostationary Meteorological Satellite Images

Abstract

This paper presents an automated method to track cumulonimbus (Cb) clouds based on cloud classification and characterizes Cb behavior from FengYun-2C (FY-2C). First, a seeded region growing (SRG) algorithm is used with artificial neural network (ANN) cloud classification as preprocessing to identify consistent homogeneous Cb patches from infrared images. Second, a cross-correlation-based approach is used to track Cb patches within an image sequence. Third, 7 pixel parameters and 19 cloud patch parameters of Cb are derived. To assess the performance of the proposed method, 8 cases exhibiting different life stages and the temporal evolution of a single case are analyzed. The results show that (1) the proposed method is capable of locating and tracking Cb until dissipation and can account for the eventual splitting or merging of clouds; (2) compared to traditional brightness temperature (TB) thresholds-based cloud tracking methods, the proposed method reduces the uncertainty stemming from TB thresholds by classifying clouds with multichannel data in an advanced manner; and (3) the configuration and developmental stages of Cb that the method identifies are close to reality, suggesting that the characterization of Cb can provide detailed insight into the study of the motion and development of thunderstorms.