Intro to Remote Sensing Lab

Stan KidderCOMET Faculty Course

August 9, 2011

The Problem

• Senator Stan Kidder, well-know deficit hawk and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, says “It’s a VIS, IR, Water Vapor world. Those three channels (0.65, 10.7, and 6.7 m) have served us well for years, and we don’t need anything else on our weather satellites. We can reduce the deficit by billions of dollars if we don’t buy all those other channels that scientists say we need.”

The Problem

• Senator Kidder has invited the Administrator of NOAA to testify before the Appropriations Committee on the need for these expensive additional channels. The hearing will be held today at 11:15 AM MDT in the COMET Classroom.

Your Task

• You all work for NOAA now!• Each lab team will prepare one PowerPoint slide, which

– Documents one algorithm that requires channels in addition to VIS, IR, WV. (List the channels and explain briefly how the algorithm works.)

– Explains why the product that the algorithm produces is scientifically and operationally important (a picture would be nice)

• Each member of each lab team will present a portion of that team’s slide during the hearing—everyone gets to talk! (But the hearing lasts only 15 minutes, which is only 1.5 minutes per slide.)

Your Task

• One member of the class will be selected at random to serve as Administrator of NOAA. The Administrator’s tasks are:– Make brief opening and closing remarks during the hearing– Very briefly introduce each team/algorithm– Make sure that no duplicate algorithms are presented.

The Schedule

• From now until 10:30 the lab teams will review materials available on the Web

• At 10:30 the Administrator of NOAA will be selected• At 10:31 the teams will meet to decide which algorithms to

present at the hearing and which team will present each one.• At 11:10 each team will place its completed PowerPoint slide in

the appropriate place on the lab computers so that it can be accessed on the Instructor computer(we’ll tell you where) and will assemble in the classroom for the start of the hearing.

• The hearing will convene at 11:15 and adjourn at 11:30—just in time for the class photo.

Questions

• Before 11:15 I will be happy to answer questions

• At 11:15 I will be asking the questions!