Looking Down Through the Clouds – Optical Attenuation through Real-Time Clouds

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

9-14-2017

Department

Department of Engineering Physics

School or Division

Graduate School of Engineering and Management

Source Publication

Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS), 2017

Abstract

Detecting and identifying nuclear explosions in the atmosphere and on the surface of the Earth is critical for the detecting and identifying nuclear explosions in the atmosphere and on the surface of the Earth is critical for the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) treaty monitoring mission. Optical signals, from surface or atmospheric nuclear explosions detected by satellite sensors, are attenuated by the atmosphere and clouds. Clouds present a particularly complex challenge as they cover up to seventy percent of the earth's surface. Moreover, their highly variable and diverse nature requires physics-based modeling. Determining the attenuation for each optical ray-path is uniquely dependent on the source geolocation, the specific optical transmission characteristics along that ray path, and sensor detection capabilities. This research details a collaborative AFTAC and AFIT effort to fuse worldwide weather data, from a variety of sources, to provide near-real-time profiles of atmospheric and cloud conditions and the resulting radiative transfer analysis for virtually any wavelength(s) of interest from source to satellite. AFIT has developed a means to model global clouds using the U.S. Air Forces World Wide Merged Cloud Analysis (WWMCA) cloud data in a new toolset that enables radiance calculations through clouds from UV to RF wavelengths.

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Copyright © 2017 Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference (AMOS)

The full paper is hosted at the conference publisher's archive using the "Link to Full Text" on this page, and is free to download. All other rights reserved.

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