arXiv subjects

Gonzalo Gonzalez Abad

Publications and source records attributed to Gonzalo Gonzalez Abad.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Harnessing Self-Supervised Deep Learning and Geostationary Remote Sensing for Advancing Wildfire and Associated Air Quality Monitoring: Improved Smoke and Fire Front Masking using GOES and TEMPO Radiance Data

This work demonstrates the possibilities for improving wildfire and air quality management in the western United States by leveraging the unprecedented hourly data from NASA's TEMPO satellite mission and advances in self-supervised deep learning. Here we demonstrate the efficacy of deep learning for mapping the near real-time hourly spread of wildfire fronts and smoke plumes using an innovative self-supervised deep learning-system: successfully distinguishing smoke plumes from clouds using GOES-18 and TEMPO data, strong agreement across the smoke and fire masks generated from different sensing modalities as well as significant improvement over operational products for the same cases.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

High-resolution geostationary satellite observations of free tropospheric NO2 over North America: implications for lightning emissions

Free tropospheric (FT) nitrogen dioxide (NO2) plays a critical role in atmospheric oxidant chemistry as a source of tropospheric ozone and of the hydroxyl radical (OH). It also contributes significantly to satellite-observed tropospheric NO2 columns, and must be subtracted when using these columns to quantify surface emissions of nitrogen oxide radicals (NOx = NO + NO2). But large uncertainties remain in the sources and chemistry of FT NO2 because observations are sparse. Here, we construct a new cloud-sliced FT NO2 (700-300 hPa) product from the TEMPO geostationary satellite instrument over North America. This product provides higher data density and quality than previous products from low Earth orbit (LEO) instruments, with the first observation of the FT NO2 diurnal cycle across seasons. Combined with coincident observations from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), the TEMPO data demonstrate the dominance of lightning as a source of FT NO2 in non-winter seasons. Comparison of TEMPO FT NO2 data with the GEOS-CF atmospheric chemistry model shows overall consistent magnitudes, seasonality, and diurnal variation, with a midday minimum in non-winter seasons from photochemical loss. However, there are major discrepancies that we attribute to GEOS-CF's use of a standard cloud-top-height (CTH)-based scheme for the lightning NOx source. We find this scheme greatly underestimates offshore lighting flash density and misrepresents the diurnal cycle of lightning over land. Our FT NO2 product provides a unique resource for improving the lightning NOx parameterization in atmospheric models and the ability to use NO2 observations from space to quantify surface NOx emissions.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2018

High Resolution Spectroscopy using Fabry Perot Intereferometer Arrays: An Application to Searches for O$_{2}$ in Exoplanetary Atmospheres

We present a novel implementation for extremely high resolution spectroscopy using custom-designed Fabry Perot Interferometer (FPI) arrays. For a given telescope aperture at the seeing limited case, these arrays can achieve resolutions well in excess of ${\rm R\sim10^5}$ using optical elements orders of magnitude smaller in size than standard echelle spectrographs of similar resolution. We apply this method specifically to the search for molecular oxygen in exoplanetary atmospheres using the ${\rm O_2}$ A-band at 0.76 ${\rm μm}$, and show how a FPI array composed of $\sim10$ etalons with parameters optimized for this science case can record ${\rm R=3-5\,\cdot10^5}$ spectra covering the full ${\rm O_2}$ A-band. Using simulated observations of the atmosphere of a transiting nearby Earth-like planet, we show how observations with a FPI array coupled to a long-slit spectrograph can reduce the number of transit observations needed to produce a ${\rm 3σ}$ detection of ${\rm O_2}$ by $\sim30\%$ compared to observations with a ${\rm R=10^5}$ echelle spectrograph. This, in turn, leads to a decrease in an observing program duration of several years. The number of transits needed for a ${\rm 3σ}$ detection can be further reduced by increasing the efficiency of FPI arrays using dualons (an etalon with a buried reflective layer), and by coupling the FPI array to a dedicated spectrograph optimized for the ${\rm O_2}$ A-band.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2014

Detecting industrial pollution in the atmospheres of earth-like exoplanets

Detecting biosignatures, such as molecular oxygen in combination with a reducing gas, in the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets has been a major focus in the search for alien life. We point out that in addition to these generic indicators, anthropogenic pollution could be used as a novel biosignature for intelligent life. To this end, we identify pollutants in the Earth's atmosphere that have significant absorption features in the spectral range covered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We focus on tetrafluoromethane CF4 and trichlorofluoromethane (CCl3F), which are the easiest to detect chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) produced by anthropogenic activity. We estimate that ~1.2 days (~1.7 days) of total integration time will be sufficient to detect or constrain the concentration of CCl3F (CF4) to ~10 times current terrestrial level.

astro-ph.EP↗