LASA 2: Monitoring Our Home Planet
Module 5: Assignment 1
Alessandro Ramirez-Maldonado
Argosy University

Remote sensing was first used in the U.S. in the 1950s by Ms. Evelyn Pruitt of the U.S. Office of Naval Research, is now commonly used to describe the science—and art—of identifying, observing, and measuring an object without coming into direct contact with it. It involves the detection and measurement of radiation of different wavelengths reflected or emitted from distant objects or materials, by which they may be identified and categorized by class/type, substance, and spatial distributions.
There are various types of satellites being used for earth observation. It varies from the area that is being seen to the frequency of observations. One type used in disaster management would be polar-orbiting satellites that aviate in low-set ambit, but provide high spatial resolution. Infrared sensors would pick up floods, thermal sensors would spot the fires that are active, and microwave sensors are used to measure earth’s deformations before and during earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.
The major disaster in the developing world would be the drought in Africa. This kind of disaster along with many others starts slowly and may be predicted in advance. “The cause of droughts in the U.S. is the disposition winds from the west. A ridge which is caused by a jet stream making a big northern bend going over the central part of the woodlands with lesser meridional curves on specific side above the east and west coast states. A large anticyclone forms below the ridge and begins to rotate. This pattern is very stable and is called an omega block, after the Greek letter omega. It can remain in place for the entire summer when its effects are most pronounced. The descending air in the anticyclone makes it nearly impossible for clouds to form or precipitation to fall (Nelson, 2014).” From the satellite observations, long-term climate forecasts will help build different case scenarios for crop-growing season.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), funded by USAID, monitors food security via satellites. It uses vegetation indices, calculated from sensors including AVHRR, MODIS and those aboard SPOT, to monitor vegetation vigor and density and spot problems as they develop. “It estimates rainfall using Meteosat infrared data, combined with rain gauge reports and microwave satellite observations, so as to model hydrological systems and how weather patterns might affect agriculture. FEWS NET also compares rainfall trends over time. By combining satellite data with regional analyses of prices, grain stores, political conditions and agricultural inputs, FEWS NET provides effective early warnings for when drought might bring food shortages. And FEWS NET is not the only initiative using satellite data for drought and famine prediction and monitoring. The Global Monitoring for Food Security, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), similarly provides early warning of famine in sub-Saharan Africa (scidev.net).”
In West Africa, there is the Hydrological and Meteorological Program (AGRHYMET), East Africa Intergovernmental Authority on Development run the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC), and the Southern African Development Community's Regional Remote Sensing Unit in South Africa together does the same jobs. The problem with this part of the planet would be response. Trying to get the information to the right person who handle relief plan is a challenge.
“Floods warning, inform response and efforts of recovery uses satellites. Flooding are the results of too much rainfall in a variety of meteorological. An example would be in the U. S. which have to do with the winter season of abundant snow which liquefy abruptly above dirt which were previously soaked alongside perspiration left from the rain in spring. The worst floods of the 20th century on the Mississippi River occurred in 1927, 1973 and 1993. In all these cases, the meteorological causes were nearly identical especially the pattern of the upper level winds--the westerlies. The core of the westerlies is the jet stream. It is not only the fastest part of the westerlies but its precise configuration determines the exact location of the boundaries between polar and tropical air masses (Nelson, 2014).”
China has used modern technology to construct the Three Gorges Dam as well as developing an up-to-date system that monitors and assess the natural disasters better. It is based on the global positioning system, remote sensing, and geographic information systems. The structure demonstrates the change of current technology to the nations to improve their capacity in responding to emergency situations. It is imperative to recognize that floods are not only caused by meteorological events. As an example, take the Tsunami that happened in the Indian Ocean in 2004 that killed over two hundred thousand people. It was caused by the repositioning of the planet’s crust layer causing one of the strongest earthquakes to be measured which results in a tidal wave that casted flood on all the coastlines neighboring the Indian Ocean. Thousands of communities along the coast were destroyed from the floods in a few hours.
Many communities and health services have learned to live with seasonal floods of moderate intensity. Periodically, the magnitude of the phenomenon exceeds the local coping capacity and overwhelms the resources of the health systems. The health burden associated with seasonal floods is well known locally: increased incidence of diarrheal, diseases, respiratory infections, dermatitis, and snake bites. The actual risk of compromised water supplies depends on the level of contamination of the community’s water supply before the disaster, compared with contamination after the flooding. Saline contamination is a long-term issue following sea surges and tsunamis. Prolonged flooding endangers local agriculture and occasionally requires food assistance on a large scale. The primary factors of morbidity remain overcrowded living conditions and poor water and sanitation in temporary settlements and other areas where water and sanitation services have deteriorated or are suspended. Satellites such as the Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission can measure and map rainfall, helping forecast heavy rains and floods. Sentinel Asia — a team of 51 organization from 18 countries — delivers remote sensing data via the Internet as easy-to-interpret information for both early warning and flood damage assessment across Asia. It uses the Dartmouth Flood Observatory's (DFO's) River Watch flood detection and measurement system, based on AMSR-E data, to map flood hazards and warn disaster managers and residents in flood-prone areas when rivers are likely to burst their banks.(scidev.net) NASA also uses DFO analyses for river basins across the world in its flood sensor Web. The sensor Web's role is to automatically alert disaster managers and government agencies to impending floods. It detects anomalies in river discharges and volumes from the DFO's Active Atlas of Large Floods. This triggers requests to satellites such as MODIS for high-resolution data over the area of interest. These are then immediately processed and forwarded to scientists and local interested partners. Sensor Webs are equally relevant to other disasters, including volcanoes, fires and dust storms — they just need different satellite data, depending on what variables are monitored.
For decades, meteorologists have used satellite representation to keep track of strong weather. As an example, the World Meteorological Organization's Tropical Cyclone Program uses satellite detection, along with the measurements and modeling of meteorological to create cyclone alarms. These assess the storm's angle, course and activity, areas to be affected, and storm growth. The broadcast dispatch these to government officials, the general public, coast guard, river port authorities, non-governmental entity and cyclone preparation programs all around the world.
“The Bay of Bengal is particularly vulnerable to cyclones data across a broad program of preparation and response. The country's Kalpana-1 and INSAT-3A satellites carry sensors that collect meteorological data in visible, near infrared and short-wave infrared. These provide data on cloud motion, sea surface temperature and rainfall. A network of cyclone warning centers analyzed the data and then issue timely warnings of impending cyclones. The warnings give information on the cyclone itself as well as likely damage and suggested action. When a cyclone threatens, the centers issue bulletins on its position, wind speed, pressure and development characteristics every hour (scidev.net).” Although humans can sometimes influence natural disasters (for example when poor levee design results in a flood), other disasters that are directly generated by humans, such as oil and toxic material spills, pollution, massive automobile or train wrecks, airplane crashes, and human induced explosions, are considered technological disasters, and will not be considered in this course, except when they occur as a secondary result of a natural disaster. Such processes are beneficial to us as humans because they are responsible for things that make the Earth a habitable planet for life. For example: Throughout Earth history, volcanism has been responsible for producing much of the water present on the Earth's surface, and for producing the atmosphere; Earthquakes are one of the processes responsible for the formation of mountain ranges which direct water to flow downhill to form rivers and lakes; Erosion processes, including flooding, landslides, and windstorms replenishes soil and helps sustain life. In general, less developed countries are more vulnerable to natural hazards than are industrialized countries because of lack of understanding, education, infrastructure, building codes, etc. Poverty also plays a role - since poverty leads to poor building structure, increased population density, and lack of communication and infrastructure. | “Human intervention in natural processes can also increase vulnerability by | * Development and habitation of lands susceptible to hazards, For example, building on floodplains subject to floods, sea cliffs subject to landslides, coastlines subject to hurricanes and floods, or volcanic slopes subject to volcanic eruptions. * Increasing the severity or frequency of a natural disaster. For example: overgrazing or deforestation leading to more severe erosion (floods, landslides), mining groundwater leading to subsidence, construction of roads on unstable slopes leading to landslides, or even contributing to global warming, leading to more severe storms (Nelson, 2014).” | The media portray a vital role in broadcasting said cautioning along with affiliated notification to the people. The National Weather Service is another way of issuing a predictions but it has to victoriously deliver to the people on time so they can make a decision that best fit for them. One of the many ways to transmit precautions would be by electronic media and would probably be the best even though there are others too. There are notifications that are automatically sent to your phone which are more common through the internet is another option. Then you have the use of friends and families calling each other if they are to be effected by the extreme weather. Forecasting and prediction will continue to be of paramount importance and will be done with increasingly complicated models. The observation networks that supply data to the models will become more elaborate and operate in near real time. The scale of the frame of reference will be larger, even global and include the oceans. Global warming will continue to influence everything in atmospheric science. Forecasting and prediction have been and will continue to be at the core of meteorological science. This will include both forecasting of immediate threats, like predicting the location and intensity of hurricane landfall, and longer range "seasonal" outlooks that will provide probabilities of some threatening weather event occurring like heavy rains or the number of Atlantic hurricanes. As atmospheric science progresses, the frame of reference will become larger, even global. For example the development of extended droughts and the incidence of Atlantic hurricanes are influenced by oceanic conditions half a world away. Reinsurance is best described as insurance for insurance companies. It limits their losses in case of a major disaster in one place where they have an inordinate number of clients. Of all the potential disasters, reinsurance companies are most concerned about hurricanes since these, collectively, have the greatest impact on the global reinsurance business. “One of the more troubling trends has been the expansion of scale for atmospheric related phenomena from the regional to the global scale. Floods, droughts, air pollution emergencies are usually local or regional in scale. However two types of air pollution, ozone depletion in the stratosphere and carbon dioxide enrichment of the atmosphere, are essentially global in their impact. Air pollution and ozone depletion may not pose immediate emergencies, but they are still of special importance because of the long-term impacts on human health (McGregor, 2016).” For the first time in history, it is clear the humans can and do impact the workings of the atmosphere at local, regional, and even global scales. As a long term threats that receive the most attention would be global warming. It is particularly alarming due to the fact of the capacity extensive effect alongside the ambiguities affiliated with these impacts. Different types of natural disaster cause by extreme weather require the emergency responses. They can range anywhere from local floods to drought which are in need of international responses. The role of meteorology has been in predicting the disasters, announcing the notice of possible occurrence along with computing the enforcement which caused the affliction. Because there are so many different types of disaster related to weather, meteorologists operate with specialists from all sorts of trainings. Some of these came from the media, government entities and relief groups like the Red Cross which share the same goal of saving lives and protecting property. The responsibility of a meteorologist is predicting an approaching calamity. Predictions today are based on models, a trend that will advance once more models are coupled together. The predictions will be more filtered along with a greater comprehension of fundamental atmospheric processes. Modernized connections are important in both the transmission of these data and in the brisk broadcasting of predictions, warnings, and watches. Communication and broadcasting of cautions can also be improved with greater authoritative preparatory measures.

References: 1. McGregor, Kent M., Associate Professor (retrieved on March 3, 2016). Weather and Emergency Management. University of North Texas.https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/docs/emt/chapter%20-%20weather%20and%20emergency%20mgmt.doc 2. De Ville de Goyet C, Marti RZ, Osorio C. Natural Disaster Mitigation and Relief. In: Jamison DT, Breman JG, Measham AR, et al., editors. Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries. 2nd edition. Washington (DC): World Bank; 2006. Chapter 61. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11792/ 3. Professor Stephen A. Nelson (August 19, 2014) Tulane University. National Disasters. Http://www.tulane.edu/sancelson/natural-disasters/introduction.htm 4. Remote Sensing for Natural Disasters: Facts and Figures. http://www.scidev.net/global/earth-science/feature/remote-sensing-for-natural-disasters-facts-and-figures.html 5. Ferrris, Elizabeth (March 3, 2010). Natural Disasters, Convlict, and Human Rights: Tracing the Connections. St. Mary’s University, San Antonio. Brookings http://www.brookings.edu/research/speeches/2010/03/03-natural-disasters-ferris 6. Cohen C.(Vice President, Sankaty Advisors, Boston MA), Werker E.(Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School, Boston MA), 2008. The Political Economy of Natural Disasters. Harvard Business School. http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/08-040.pdf