University of Colorado at Boulder
Department of Geography
Remote Sensing of the Environment, Spring 1997
Prof. Koni Steffen

An Animation of Sea Surface Brightness Temperatures

Final Project

Sara Irina Fabrikant
Michael James Rock
University of Colorado at Boulder
April 29, 1997

* This animation won the National Geographic Society Award in Cartography 1998. *

Introduction

An animation of sea surface brightness temperature (TB) of Arctic waters was created to compliment a lecture on TB for an introductory remote sensing class. The animation used SSM/I images obtained from the EOSDIS NSIDC Distributed Active Archive Center, University of Colorado at Boulder. They consist of averaged daily TB values from January 1, 1996 to March 31, 1996. The images are from the 88.5 GHz sensor, polarized horizontally and having a spatial resolution of 12.5 km by 12.5 km. The area represented covers 87 Deg. N to approximately 55 Deg. N. This animation could be utilized with a discussion of changes in TB over time. Concepts in this animation include the seasonality of TB, the tracking of ocean currents, and the tracing of cyclonic events over the North Atlantic.

Animation Production

The animation process began by importing the SSM/I images from the NSIDC CD/ROM to ENVI (a remote sensing image analysis and processing software package) on UNIX. In ENVI each image underwent a Gaussian contrast stretching by setting minimum pixel values to 165 K and maximum values from 260 K to 275 K. The images were exported to TIFF files and imported into Adobe Photoshop 3.0, an image processing package for the Macintosh. After being cropped to form a 546 by 525 pixel image, a custom color gradient was applied to color the high pixel values red and the low values blue. The images were them imported into Macromedia Director, an animation package for the Macintosh. To establish location a latitude/longitude grid was placed over the image, along with a land mask. The images were then animated.

Viewing the Animation

To view this animation and another animation about ice bergs in the arctic you can download the files from from here. Two versions are available: Windows NT/95 (WinZip) and Macintosh (StuffIt) formatted. Please consult READ_ME files before viewing animations.