Satellite Data-Based Ground Transportation Weather Warning Service over the Tibetan Plateau Using CSPP

Ground transportation in Tibet consists of mostly freight and passenger transport. More recently, self-driving tourists have greatly increased in Tibet. Ensuring ground transportation safety in the vast “Roof of the World” elevated region is becoming more demanding and critical. The total length of roads open to traffic in Tibet, including one of the best overland journeys on the planet – Friendship Highway, is close to 100,000 kilometers covering an area of more than 1.2 million square km with 50 mountains with altitudes of up to 7,000 meters and 11 peaks rising over 8,000 meters above sea level. The “Roof of the World” is not practical for building the automatic meteorological ground observation systems due to the high cost of deployment and maintenance. Modern-day weather and environment satellite remote sensing, has since, becoming particularly suitable for meeting the challenging demand to provide vital weather warning and ground condition monitoring information and services in Tibet.

The open-source Community Satellite Processing Package (CSPP), sponsored by NOAA JPSS program, is developed and maintained by the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) based in University of Wisconsin-Madison. So far, CSPP, is used by over 2,250 registered users in over 94 countries, is capable of processing various Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) meteorological/environmental satellite data received by direct broadcast system in real-time, and can be autonomously producing various atmospheric and ground surface retrieval products according to users’ specific requirements. CSPP real-time LEO/GEO products such as snow cover, ice cover, fog, and ground surface temperature have the biggest impact on ground traffic in Tibet, are targeted as the initial low latency, fine-scale, and reliable information service demonstration.

Under “Help-Tibetan Initiative”, we are to leverage CSPP and meteorological satellite sounding and imaging data including those provided by China CMA, US NOAA, and European EUMETSAT LEO and GEO systems. In particular, the initial retrieval products such as 1) CSPP-ASCI: US S-NPP and NOAA-20 VIIRS Aerosol, Snow/Ice, Cloud, and Volcanic Ash products, 2) CMA FY-3D MERSI (Medium Resolution Spectral Imager) surface products, 3) CSPP-MIRS: US S-NPP/NOAA-20 ATMS, Europe METOP AMSU snow water equivalent retrievals, 4) CSPP-HSRTV & CSPP-NUCAPE: US CrIS/ATMS and Europe METOP IASI surface emissivity/type, and surface skin temperature, 5) CSPP-GEOCAT: JMA AHI high temporal (every 10 minutes) fog and surface temperature retrievals.

Above all, with heterogeneous nature of the CSPP LEO/GEO retrieval products in spatial, temporal, and accuracy, we are to develop and evaluate an appropriate solution to downscale in both spatial and temporal domain where reliable information can be obtained in a format suitable to integrate seamlessly with the GIS-based road and highway spatial information to provide the most appropriate ground transportation weather warning services for the “Roof of the World”.