Temporal updating scheme for probabilistic neural network with application to satellite cloud classification--further results.

A novel temporal updating approach for probabilistic neural network classifiers was developed by Tian et al. (2000) to account for temporal changes of spectral and temperature features of clouds in the visible and infrared GOES 8 (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) imagery data. In this paper, a new method referred to as moving singular value decomposition (MSVD) is introduced to improve the classification rate of the boundary blocks or blocks containing cloud types with non-uniform texture. The MSVD method is then incorporated into the temporal updating scheme and its effectiveness is demonstrated on several sequences of GOES 8 cloud imagery data. These results indicate that the incorporation of the new MSVD improves the overall performance of the temporal updating process by almost 10%

Temporal updating scheme for probabilistic neural network with application to satellite cloud classification.

In cloud classification from satellite imagery, temporal change in the images is one of the main factors that causes degradation in the classifier performance. In this paper, a novel temporal updating approach is developed for probabilistic neural network (PNN) classifiers that can be used to track temporal changes in a sequence of images. This is done by utilizing the temporal contextual information and adjusting the PNN to adapt to such changes. Whenever a new set of images arrives, an initial classification is first performed using the PNN updated up to the last frame while at the same time, a prediction using Markov chain models is also made based on the classification results of the previous frame. The results of both the old PNN and the predictor are then compared. Depending on the outcome, either a supervised or an unsupervised updating scheme is used to update the PNN classifier. Maximum likelihood (ML) criterion is adopted in both the training and updating schemes. The proposed scheme is examined on both a simulated data set and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) 8 satellite cloud imagery data. These results indicate the improvements in the classification accuracy when the proposed scheme is used.

Initial solar irradiance determinations from nimbus 7 cavity radiometer measurements.

Preliminary results from solar radiation measurements from the earth radiation budget experiment on the Nimbus 7 satellite yield a mean value of 1376.0 watts per square meter for the "solar constant" from 16 November 1978 to 15 May 1979. The observed variability (root-mean-square deviation) is +/- 0.73 watt per square meter (+/- 0.05 percent) for the period.