DETECTION OF CONVECTIVE CLOUD MOVEMENT by Roopali Kalra
Abstract
Weather information is very important for human safety, agriculture or to prevent any kind of loss. Clouds play a very important role in balancing energy and water cycle. Also, they are helpful in predicting weather information. There are two forms of clouds which are present in the sky. These clouds are namely stratiform clouds and some are convective clouds. Stratified clouds are known as low clouds. These clouds have uniform base and have horizontal layering. Stratified clouds result into a light mizzle or a small amount of snow and do not indicate much meteorological activity. Convective clouds are ones that form and grow by the process known as convection. Precipitation from these types of cloud is often short-term, heavy and usually begins and ends suddenly. To identify the types of clouds is an important task as if one can have that knowledge before-hand, the damage to life and property which are caused due to heavy rain or storms can be prevented. Convective clouds are high intensity clouds and stratiform clouds are low intensity clouds. The main idea of this work is to extract the high intensity clouds and low intensity clouds from the meteorological images and also check if there is any anomalous movement in the convective clouds. MAXZ image from Doppler weather radar installed in Patiala has been used. The radar covers the various locations in the radius of 250 km from Patiala. The color scale has been used to differentiate two types of cloud. The shape of the clouds has been detected on the basis of area and depending on the shape, the movement of clouds is judged.
