Global Satellite Monitoring of Exothermic Industrial Activity via Infrared Emissions

作者：Christopher D. Elvidge, Mikhail Zhizhin, Tamara L. Sparks, Tilottama Ghosh, Stephen Pon, Morgan Bazilian, Paul C. Sutton, Steven D. Miller · 发表于：Remote Sensing · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.3390/rs15194760 · 被引用次数：13 · 研究领域：Oil, Gas, and Environmental Issues、Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics、Atmospheric chemistry and aerosols

This paper reports on the first daily global monitoring program for natural gas flaring and industrial sites producing waste heat based on satellite observed infrared emissions. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) collects nightly global infrared data in spectral bands ranging from near infrared (NIR) to longwave infrared (LWIR), providing a unique capability to detect and characterize infrared emitters at night. The VIIRS nightfire (VNF) algorithm identifies infrared (IR) emitters with multiple spectral bands and calculates the temperature, source area, and radiant heat via Planck curve fitting and physical laws. VNF data are produced nightly and extend from 2012 to the present. The most common infrared emitter is biomass burning, which must be filtered out. Industrial IR emitters can be distinguished from biomass burning based on temperature and persistence. The initial filtering to remove biomass burning was performed with 15 arc second grids formed from eleven years of VIIRS data, spanning 2012–2022. The locations and shapes of the remaining features were used to guide the generation of super-resolution pixel center clouds. These data clouds were then analyzed to define bounding vectors for single emitters and to split larger clusters into multiple emitters. A total of nearly 20,000 IR emitters were identified; each was assigned an identification number, and the type of emitter was recorded. Nightly temporal profiles were produced for each site, revealin...