Course Goal: This course is designed to examine the use of satellites to study our climate system.  More specifically, the course introduces the history of satellite meteorology/climatology, fundamental radiation principles and the radiative transfer equation, satellites and sensors, along with basic image interpretation, enhancement and preprocessing techniques.  Data analysis techniques are also investigated to retrieve climate information from remotely sensed data that is of interest to the students

Prerequisites: Students should have completed GEOG412, Physical Climatology.  Prior familiarity with unix and basic image processing and GIS software are useful.

Class Meetings:  Lectures are scheduled from 11:15am to 12:05pm Monday, Wednesday and Friday's in Pearson Room 203 and in the GIS Teaching Classroon located in Penny Hall, Room 005 (announced in advance during class).   

Text and Readings:  No formal textbook is required for this course.  Rather selected book chapters and recent and relevant journal articles will be assigned as the semester progresses.  These readings will provide background material, demonstrate the current state of the field, and stimulate class discussion.  A copy of the Readings will be placed outside the Instructor's office on the file cabinet in a notebook labeled Geog674.

Exercises:  Several in-class and 4-6 out-of-class exercises will be assigned to provide hands-on experience with interpreting satellite imagery and deriving climate information.  Two primary image processing software packages will be used throughout the semester including McIDAS and Erdas Imagine, as well as Desktop ArcGIS when necessary.  

Project: A remote sensing class project is to be completed that extends class discussions and exercises of satellite derived climate information (and algorithms).  Students will propose topics in the 8th week of the semester, follow with discussion of each proposal, and vote on a topic of most interest with the majority vote selected as the class project topic.  The class will then conduct a literature review of the status of remote sensing the selected climate variable and define a research problem to investigate.  A study will be conducted and summarized in a short paper to be submitted for publication, if results are favorable and worthy of publication.  Individual student project grades will be based on the evaluation of oneself, class evaluation of each student, and the Instructor's evaluation.   

Grading: Grades will be based upon total points accumulated by the end of the semester.