Author's posts
Jan 11 2015
The Darkest Spot in Switzerland
By analysis of our MeteoSwiss high quality satellite-based solar irradiance maps created by the Heliomont algorithm I’ve found that the sunniest place in Switzerland is close to the Monte Rosa hut of the Swiss Alpine Club SAC. During the calculation of the Solar Atlas of Switzerland (to be published as “The Solar Cadaster of Switzerland” on the Geoportal of …
May 24 2012
Flowering in the Greenhouse
During the last few decades flowering and leafing of temperate and boreal vegetation has advanced by several days in response to warming. The climate sensitivity, as inferred from long-term observations, is estimated to be 2.5-5.0 days per degree C warming. Wolkovich et al. now show in their letter to Nature, that this response cannot be …
May 04 2012
Digital Object Identifiers
Digital Object Identifiers (DOI’s) are often used to uniquely identify and reference digital content of written documents such as scientific publications or books. This is helpful to track a content over a long time period, where the actual location of the content may change, but any reference to it will have to stay the same. …
Mar 15 2012
Remote Sensing of Solar Surface Radiation
We have processed a global irradiance and direct irradiance climate data record from the Meteosat first generation satellites (Meteosats 2 to 7, 1983–2005). The CDRs are available free of charge for all purposes from the EUMETSAT‘s Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring Web User Interface at monthly, daily and hourly means at a spatial resolution …
Mar 09 2012
How to “bluemarbelize” Google Maps?
Introduction Google Maps and Google Earth (hereafter Google Maps) are publicly available tools useful to visually explore the geography of our planet. Globally distributed high resolution satellite data are used as a background to dynamically map physical, geographical, historical, socio-economic or political thematic layers. Nowadays the average, educated person with access to the internet either …
Feb 24 2012
Art from Space
I am working on a solar position and orbit predictor application for the International Space Station that will serve as planning tool for a new art project of Christian Waldvogel. For updates visit his website http://www.waldvogel.com
Jan 01 2012
Satellite-based planning of Solar Energy Applications
My tasks at MeteoSwiss include the analyses of the spatial and temporal variability of the surface solar irradiance with special emphasis on the complex Alpine terrain and the diverse interactions of horizon, snow cover and cloudiness in this terrain. One major result of this work is a satellite-based climatology of solar irradiance including its radiation …
Aug 25 2011
Global Re-Analysis of Vegetation
Our previous work on the remote-sensing based data assimilation framework has been extended to regional and global scales. It employs a subgrid‐scale representation of plant functional types (PFTs) and elevation classes to generate a globally applicable phenological parameter set. We are able to predict (or hindcast) a 50 year long (1960–2009) daily 1° × 1° global phenology climate …
Nov 26 2008
Remote Sensing Data Assimilation
We have developed a computational framework for data assimilation of Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation absorbed by vegetation (FPAR) and Leaf Area Index (LAI) from the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to constrain empirical temperature, light, moisture and structural vegetation parameters in a prognostic phenology model. It uses the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) after …
Jan 01 2007
Blue Marble images on the IPCC 4th assessment report (2007)
The Blue Marble western and eastern hemispheres by Reto Stöckli (NASA Earth Observatory) are displayed to the left as printed on the front cover of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 4th assessment WGI report “The Physical Science Basis”. These images integrate land, ocean, sea ice and clouds into a visual representation of …