Task 5B Status Update

August 21, 2012

• Results/interpretation from Southeast Asia (separate file)

Full Resolution Image

• January shows the least amount of could cover in Liberia.

•Northern part of the country experiences average cloud fraction 30-50%

• Southern half sees 50-70% cloud cover.

• Increased cloud cover over Inner Niger Delta

• This may be due to the intersection of very dry air from the Sahel with moist air over the delta.

• Cloud amounts increase from south to North.

• This is due to northward migration of the ITCZ.

• As ITCZ continues northward, cloud cover in Liberia increases to 80-100%.

• By August, nearly the entire region experiences 90-100% cloud cover at 1030 LT.

• As the ITCZ begins to migrate southward, decreased cloud amounts are seen in the northernmost part of the region.

•Niger, Nakambi, and Bafing Rivers, Lake Volta in Ghana and a large lake in western Mali are all evident.

• Cloud cover continues to decrease N-S as ITCZ moves southward.

• Inner Niger Delta again becomes evident.

First Look: Results from South America

(Separate File)

Color Bars?

Code/ Result Delivery

• Code is currently in IDL– Uses some IDL-specific functions to interpolate 5km lats/lons

to 1km values• MODIS data is in HDF-EOS Format.

– IDL-specific routine used to read data– Format often requires special toolkits in order to read in

other languages.• Currently takes about 2.5 hours to run one 10 x 10 tile

for one month (could be cut back a little, but not much).• All output files are in binary format, figures in .png

• Cloud mask file sizes ~ 4MB each (one tile/one month)

• Daily files used to make monthly histograms: 7.5 MB each (one tile/day)

• Histogram files (one tile/one month): 40KB• Assorted listing files used to process large

amounts of data: most <5 KB.