In this paper we present a novel approach to estimate and analyze 3D uid structure and motion of clouds from multi-spectrum 2D cloud image sequences. Accurate cloud-top structure and motion are very important for a host of meteorological and climate applications. However, due to the extremely complex nature of cloud uid motion, classical nonrigid motion analysis methods will be insu cient to solve this particular problem. In this paper, two spectra of satellite cloud images are utilized. The high-resolution visible channel is rst used to perform cloud tracking by using a recursive algorithm which integrates local motion analysis with a set of global uid constraints which is dened according to the physical uid dynamics. Then, the infrared channel thermodynamic information is incorporated to postprocess the cloud tracking results in order to capture the cloud density variations and small details of cloud uidity. Experimental results on GOES Geostationary Operational Environmental Satell...
Lin Zhou, Chandra Kambhamettu, Dmitry B. Goldgof