OTTAWA BRANCH / SECTION D'OTTAWA
CIG Ottawa Branch
Long-Term Satellite Data Records over Canada and Arctic Region:
Addressing Big Data Challenges in Climate Change Applications
Satellite observations provide unique source of spatially complete data about Canada and Arctic environment including atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and land surface. These observations are collected from a large number of satellite platforms and sensors working in different domains of electromagnetic spectrum: optical, thermal and microwave, and different modes: passive and active. The talk will provide an overview of various satellite systems employed for observations of northern environment specific to Canada and Arctic. Altogether space borne systems collect and transmit to the ground very big volumes of information. How to handle such a big volume of data? How to convert these data streams into useful products suitable for climate applications and detection of subtle signals of climate change? The talk will describe some critical steps in satellite data processing, as well as associated requirements and uncertainties. Some specific examples will be presented for long-term variations of minimum snow and ice extent (MSI). Snow and ice are important hydrological resources playing essential role for human activities and ecosystem functions. They exert a significant influence on the Earth climate through hydrological and energy cycles, and serve as very sensitive indicator of climate change.
This work is part of the CCRS project on developing the Long-Term Satellite Data Records of Canada’s landmass.
Dr. Alexander P. Trishchenko
Senior Research Scientist
Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS)
Department of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)
Alexander P. Trishchenko is a Senior Research Scientist (RES-05) with the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), Department of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). He received the Master degree in physics from the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Soviet Union, in 1982 and the Ph.D. degree in physics from the same University in 1987. He joined CCRS in 1996. His major fields are remote sensing methods in optical and thermal bands, radiation budget, radiative transfer modelling, orbital mechanics, as well as development and analysis of the Long-Term Satellite Data Records (LTSDR) of Canada’s landmass. He was the Principal Investigator within the US Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurements Program, Scanner for Radiation Budget (ScaRaB), several projects supported by the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency and the Department of Natural Resources Canada. He is now actively involved in research related to application of big volume LTSDR for Arctic and climate change monitoring. A.Trishchenko is a member of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, American Meteorological Society, Canadian Remote Sensing Society and American Geophysical Union. He is an Associate Editor of Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing and Commissioner of the International Radiation Commission. He was a member of several NASA review panels. A.Trishchenko is a member of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Independent Advisory Committee for polar and geostationary satellite systems.
