CIVL1180

Monitoring Changing Climate From Space

Prof. Hui Su
Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering

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06 September, 2023
Brief Review of Last
Class

• Course overview
• HKUST-FYBB #1 satellite
• Definition of remote sensing
• Remote sensing platforms
• History of artificial satellites
• Trends in the size and weight of
satellites
• Cost of satellite missions

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 Climate and Weather
■ Climate is what we expect and weather is what we get.
Weather Climate
• Short term • Long term
• Limited area • Wide area
• Can change rapidly • Changes are gradual

Weather is what’s happening outside our Climate is the average of many years of
room right now weather observation.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zttbcmn/
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articles/zhrdwnb
 What is Climate Change?
■ Climate change is significant changes in global temperature,
precipitation, wind patterns and other measures of climate that
occur over several decades or longer.

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 Geologic Evidence (millions of years)

Figure Credit: Dragons Flight (Robert A. Rohde)

Reconstruction of the past 5 million years of climate history, based on oxygen isotope fractionation in
deep sea sediment cores (serving as a proxy for the total global mass of glacial ice sheets), fitted to a
model of orbital forcing (Lisiecki and Raymo 2005) and to the temperature scale derived
from Vostok ice cores following Petit et al. (1999). 5
 Ice Cores Record
(from 800,000 years before present)

Temperature estimates relative to 1950 from over 800,000 years of the EPICA ice cores in
Antarctica. The present (1950) is on the right side of the graph.

Autopilot, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Global Average Temperature Change

Figure Credit: Ed Hawkins

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Greenhouse Gases

• Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Water Vapor

(H2O), Methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide
(N2O), Ozone (O3) …

• Without greenhouse gases, the Earth

would be very cold, about -18ºC.

• Human activities have added

greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere.

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 Physical Basis of Greenhouse Effect

In 1896, Swedish chemist and physicist

Svante Arrhenius published the first
article suggesting that carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere might affect Earth’s
climate via the greenhouse effect.
In 1859, Irish physicist John Tyndall established that CO2 and H2O
were among the gases that absorbed heat and re-radiated heat,
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the physical basis of the greenhouse effect.
2021 Nobel Physics Prize

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 The Keeling Curve

The Keeling Curve: accumulation of CO2 based on continuous measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory
on the island of Hawaii from 1958 to the present day. The curve is named for the scientist
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Charles David Keeling, who started the monitoring program and supervised it until his death in 2005.
CO2 Variations

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 CO2, CH4 and Temperature Variations

Credit: David Bice © Penn State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 13
Evidence of Climate Change

https://climate.nasa.gov/
 NASA Earth Observing Fleet

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004900/a004928/fleet_2021_dec_15_4k_002_2160p59.94.mp4
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NASA Earth Observing Fleet

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30065 16
European Space Agency Copernicus Program

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 ESA Copernicus Program
• Sentinel-1 is a polar-orbiting, all-weather, day-and-night radar imaging mission for land and ocean services. Sentinel-1A was launched on 3 April
2014 and Sentinel-1B on 25 April 2016. The mission ended for Sentinel-1B in 2022 and plans are in force to launch Sentinel-1C as soon as
possible.

• Sentinel-2 is a polar-orbiting, multispectral high-resolution imaging mission for land monitoring to provide, for example, imagery of vegetation,
soil and water cover, inland waterways and coastal areas. Sentinel-2 can also deliver information for emergency services. Sentinel-2A was
launched on 23 June 2015 and Sentinel-2B followed on 7 March 2017.

• Sentinel-3 is a multi-instrument mission to measure sea-surface topography, sea- and land-surface temperature, ocean colour and land colour
with high-end accuracy and reliability. The mission supports ocean forecasting systems, as well as environmental and climate
monitoring. Sentinel-3A was launched on 16 February 2016 and Sentinel-3B joined its twin in orbit on 25 April 2018.

• Sentinel-5 Precursor – also known as Sentinel-5P – is the forerunner of Sentinel-5 to provide timely data on a multitude of trace gases and
aerosols affecting air quality and climate. It has been developed to reduce data gaps between the Envisat satellite – in particular the Sciamachy
instrument – and the launch of Sentinel-5. Sentinel-5P was taken into orbit on 13 October 2017.

• Sentinel-4 is a payload devoted to atmospheric monitoring that will be embarked upon a Meteosat Third Generation-Sounder (MTG-S) satellite
in geostationary orbit.

• Sentinel-5 is a payload that will monitor the atmosphere from polar orbit aboard a MetOp Second Generation satellite.

• Sentinel-6 carries a radar altimeter to measure global sea-surface height, primarily for operational oceanography and for climate studies. The
first satellite was launched into orbit on 21 November 2020 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, US.

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 Chinese Satellite Program
Fengyun meteorological satellite (FY) Haiyang Ocean Satellite (HY)

Huanjing Disaster and Environmental China High-resolution Earth

Monitoring Satellite (HJ) Ziyuan/CBERS Earth Resources Observation System (CHEOS)
Satellite (ZY)

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Chinese Commercial Remote Sensing Satellites

Jilin-1 Series

Beijing Series

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Top 8 Countries that Have the Most Satellites in Space

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Top 8 Countries that Have the Most Satellites in Space

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 Earth Observing Satellite Orbits
• Low Earth orbit: 180-2000 km, many Earth observing satellites
• Mid Earth Orbit: 2000-36000 km, navigation and specialty satellites
• High Earth Orbit: ≥ 36,000 km, weather and communications satellites

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 Earth Observing Satellite Orbits
• Sun-synchronous polar orbits
– Most earth imaging satellites is polar-orbiting, meaning that they circle
the planet in a roughly north-south ellipse while the earth revolves
beneath them. Therefore, there are only certain times when a particular
place on the ground will be captured
– global coverage, fixed crossing time, repeat sampling
– typical altitude 500-1,500 km
– example: Terra, Aqua, Aura, CloudSat, CALIPSO, OCO2

• Non-Sun-synchronous orbits
– Tropics, mid-latitudes, or high latitude coverage, varying sampling
– typical altitude 200-2,000 km
– example: TRMM, GPM, ICESat

• Geostationary orbits
– regional coverage, continuous sampling
– over low-middle latitudes, altitude 36,000 km
– example: GOES 24
 Orbit Speed and Period
Orbital Speed Equation
Consider a satellite with mass Msat orbiting a central body with a mass of mass MCentral. The central body could be
a planet, the sun or some other large mass capable of causing sufficient acceleration on a less massive nearby
object. If the satellite moves in circular motion, then the net centripetal force acting upon this orbiting satellite is
given by the relationship
Fnet = ( Msat • v2 ) / R
This net centripetal force is the result of the gravitational force that attracts the satellite towards the central body
and can be represented as
Fgrav = ( G • Msat • MCentral ) / R2
Since Fgrav = Fnet, the above expressions for centripetal force and gravitational force can be set equal to each
other. Thus,
(Msat • v2) / R = (G • Msat • MCentral ) / R2
Observe that the mass of the satellite is present on both sides of the equation; thus it can be canceled by dividing
through by Msat. Then both sides of the equation can be multiplied by R, leaving the following equation.
v2 = (G • MCentral ) / R
Taking the square root of each side, leaves the following equation for the velocity of a satellite moving about a
central body in circular motion and period T
𝐯 = 𝟐𝛑𝐑/𝐓

where G is 6.673 x 10-11 N•m2/kg2, Mcentral is the mass of the central body about which the satellite orbits, and R is the radius
of orbit for the satellite. 25
 Geostationary Orbit

Orbit Period Equation:

𝑹𝟑 =[(𝑻𝟐 ∗ 𝑮 ∗ 𝑴𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒍 )/(𝟒 ∗ 𝝅𝟐 )]

Given/Known: Unknown:
T = 86400 s h = ??? R3 = 7.54 x 1022 m3
Mearth = 5.98x1024 kg
Rearth = 6.37 x 106 m R = 4.23 x 107 m
G = 6.673 x 10-11 N m2/kg2
𝒉 = 𝑹 − 𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒉 = 3.6 x 𝟏𝟎𝟕 m
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Geostationary Satellites

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