A geospatial web portal for sharing and analyzing greenhouse gas data derived from satellite remote sensing images

Abstract

Greenhouse gas data collected by different institutions throughout the world have significant scientific values for global climate change studies. Due to the diversity of data formats and different specifications of data access interfaces, most of those data should be first downloaded onto a local machine before they can be used. To overcome this limitation, we present a geospatial web portal for sharing and analyzing greenhouse gas data derived from remote sensing images. As a proof-of-concept, a prototype has also been designed and implemented. The workflow of the web portal contains four processes: data access, data analysis, results visualization, and results output. A large volume of greenhouse gas data have been collected, described, and indexed in the portal, and a variety of data analysis services, such as calculating the temporal variation of regionally averaged column CO₂ values and analyzing the latitudinal variations of globally averaged column CO₂ values, are integrated into this portal. With the integrated geospatial data and services, researchers can collect and analyze greenhouse gas data online, and can preview and download the analysis results directly from the web portal. The geospatial web portal has been implemented as a web application, and we also used a study case to illustrate this framework.

Keywords

greenhouse gas data / geospatial web portal / online spatial analysis

References

[1] AGU (1995). Water Vapor in the Climate System Special Report. Washington, D C: American Geophysical Union Publications Office

[2] Alkhaled A A, Michalak A M, Kawa S R, Olsen S C, Wang J W (2008). A global evaluation of the regional spatial variability of column integrated CO₂ distributions. J Geophys Res, D, Atmospheres, 113(D20): D20303

[3] Aumann H H, Chahine M T, Gautier C, Goldberg M D, Kalnay E, McMillin L M, Revercomb H, Rosenkranz P W, Smith W L, Staelin D H, Strow L L, Susskind J (2003). AIRS/AMSU/HSB on the aqua mission: design, science objectives, data products, and processing systems. IEEE Trans Geosci Rem Sens, 41(2): 253--264

[4] Bai W G, Zhang X Y, Zhang P (2010). Temporal and spatial distribution of tropospheric CO₂ over China based on satellite observations. Chin Sci Bull, 55(31): 3612-3618

[5] Barkley M P, Monks P S, Engelen R J (2006). Comparison of SCIAMACHY and AIRS CO₂ measurements over North America during the summer and autumn of 2003. Geophys Res Lett, 33(20): L20805

[6] Blond N, Boersma K F, Eskes H J, van der A R J, van Roozendael M, de Smedt I, Bergametti G, Vautard R (2007). Intercomparison of SCIAMACHY nitrogen dioxide observations, in situ measurements and air quality modeling results over Western Europe. J Geophys Res, D, Atmospheres, 112(D10): D10311

[7] Bovensmann H, Burrows J P, Buchwitz M, Frerick J, Noel S, Rozanov V V, Chance K V, Goede A P H (1999). SCIAMACHY: mission objectives and measurement modes. J Atmos Sci, 56(2): 127-150

[8] Goodchild M F, Zhou J Y (2003). Finding geographic information: collection-level metadata. GeoInformatica, 7(2): 95-112

[9] IPCC (2001). 6.3 Well-mixed Greenhouse Gases. Working Group I: The Scientific Basis IPCC Third Assessment Report-Climate Change 2001, Retrieved 2012, from

[10] Jacob D (1999). Introduction to Atmospheric Chemistry. New Jersey: Princeton University Press

[11] Karl T R, Trenberth K E (2003). Modern global climate change. Science, 302(5651): 1719-1723

[12] Le Treut H, Somerville R, Cubasch U, Ding Y, Mauritzen C, Mokssit A, Peterson T, Prather M (2007). Historical Overview of Climate Change Science. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt K B, Tignor M, Miller H L, eds. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

[13] Longley P A, Maguire D J (2005). Geoportals. Comput Environ Urban Syst, 29(1): 1

[14] Nativi S, Domenico B (2009). Enabling interoperability for Digital Earth: Earth Science coverage access services. International Journal of Digital Earth 2(Suppl 1): 79-104

[15] Strow L L, Hannon S E, de Souza-Machado S, Motteler H E, Tobin D (2003). An overview of the AIRS radiative transfer model. IEEE Trans Geosci Rem Sens, 41(2): 303-313

[16] Tait M G (2005). Implementing geoportals: applications of distributed GIS. Comput Environ Urban Syst, 29(1): 33-47

[17] Titov A, Gordov E, Okladnikov I, Shulgina T (2009). Web-system for processing and visualization of meteorological data for Siberian environment research. International Journal of Digital Earth, 2(Suppl 1): 105-119

[18] van der Wel F J M (2005). Spatial data infrastructure for meteorological and climatic data. Meteorol Appl, 12(1): 7-8

[19] Wang K, Jiang H, Zhang X Y, Zhou G M (2011). Analysis of spatial and temporal variations of carbon dioxide over China using SCIAMACHY satellite observations during 2003-2005. Int J Remote Sens, 32(3): 815-832

[20] Woolf A, Cramer R, Gutierrez M, van Dam K K, Kondapalli S, Latham S, Lawrence B, Lowry R, O’Neill K (2005). Standards-based data interoperability in the climate sciences. Meteorol Appl, 12(1): 9-22

[21] Woolf A, Haines K, Liu C L (2003). A web service model for climate data access on the grid. Int J High Perform Comput Appl, 17(3): 281-295

[22] Yokota T, Yoshida Y, Eguchi N, Ota Y, Tanaka T, Watanabe H, Maksyutov S (2009). Global Concentrations of CO₂ and CH₄ Retrieved from GOSAT: first preliminary results. SOLA, 5: 160-163

[23] Zhang L, Dong C H, Zhang W J, Zhang P (2008). METOP-on-board super-high spectrum resolution infrared atmospheric sounding interferometer (IASI). Meteorological Science and Technology, 36(5): 639-642 (in Chinese)

[24] Zhang X Y, Jiang H, Wang Y Q, Han Y, Buchwitz M, Schneising O, Burrows J P (2011). Spatial variations of atmospheric methane concentrations in China. Int J Remote Sens, 32(3): 833-847

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg