DAGDU: center location of tropical cyclones using Deviation Angle Gradient Distribution Uniformity from infrared satellite images

ABSTRACT

The tropical cyclone (TC) is a strong weather system that forms on the surface of the ocean. It is important to locate the TC centre when monitoring and forecasting. Infrared geostationary satellite images are reliable sources of TC location due to their high temporal resolution and wide regional coverage. A novel method for locating the centre of tropical cyclones by deviation angle gradient distribution uniformity is proposed in this paper. A region of interest is first intercepted from an infrared image with a spatial resolution of 5 km per pixel derived from the China FY-2 C and FY-2E geostationary satellites. The Bezier histogram segmentation method and K-means clustering segmentation method are then used to obtain the binary image in which the infrared brightness temperature changes drastically. Next, Hough transformation is utilized to reduce the search range of the centre location of the tropical cyclone. Finally, the deviation angle gradient distribution uniformity matrix is calculated from each pixel in the detection area as the reference centre, and the maximum value location of the matrix is considered to be the corresponding tropical cyclone centre. The methodology of this study could achieve good performance compared with the best track data of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), and the United States Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC).

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 42075140 and 41575046) and the Project of Commonwealth Techniques and Application Research of Zhejiang Province, China (no.LGF20D050004). The FY-2C and FY-2E Geostationary Satellite IR imagery were downloaded from the Chinese National Satellite Meteorological Center (NSMC; http://satellite.nsmc.org.cn). Best-track TC files were downloaded from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA; http://tcdata.typhoon.org.cn), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA; https://www.jma.go.jp), and the United States Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC; https://www.metoc.navy.mil/jtwc/jtwc.html?western-pacific). We thank LetPub (https://www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [42075140], the Project of Commonwealth Techniques and Application Research of Zhejiang Province, China [No.LGF20D050004], and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [41575046].