Rebekah B. Esmaili - Earth Observation Using Python

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Special Publications 75

Rebekah B. Esmaili

This Work is a co‐publication of the American Geophysical Union and John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

This edition first published 2021

© 2021 American Geophysical Union

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Published under the aegis of the AGU Publications Committee

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Carol Frost, Chair, Publications Committee

For details about the American Geophysical Union visit us at www.agu.org.

The right of Rebekah B. Esmaili to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Name: Esmaili, Rebekah Bradley, author. Title: Earth observation using Python : a practical programming guide / Rebekah B. Esmaili. Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021001631 (print) | LCCN 2021001632 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119606888 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119606895 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119606918 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Earth sciences—Data processing. | Remote sensing–Data processing. | Python (Computer program language) | Information visualization. | Artificial satellites in earth sciences. | Earth sciences—Methodology. Classification: LCC QE48.8 .E85 2021 (print) | LCC QE48.8 (ebook) | DDC 550.285/5133—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001631LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001632

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: © NASA

When I first met the author a few years ago, she was eager to become more involved in the Joint Polar Satellite System’s Proving Ground. The Proving Ground by definition assesses the impact of a product in the user’s environment; this intrigued Rebekah because as a product developer, she wanted to understand the user’s perspective. Rebekah worked with the National Weather Service to demonstrate how satellite‐derived atmospheric temperature and water vapor soundings can be used to describe the atmosphere’s instability to support severe weather warnings. Rebekah spent considerable time with users at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, to understand their needs, and she found their thirst for data and the need for data to be easily visualized and understandable. This is where Rebekah leveraged her expert skills in Python to provide NWS with the information they found to be most useful. Little did I know at the time she was writing a book.

As noted in this book, a myriad of Earth‐observing satellites collect critical information of the Earth’s complex and ever‐changing environment and landscape. However, today, unfortunately, all that information is not effectively being used for various reasons: issues with data access, different data formats, and the need for better tools for data fusion and visualization. If we were able to solve these problems, then suddenly there would be vast improvements in providing societies with the information needed to support decisions related to weather and climate and their impacts, including high‐impact weather events, droughts, flooding, wildfires, ocean/coastal ecosystems, air quality, and more. Python is becoming the universal language to bridge these various data sources and translate them into useful information. Open and free attributes, and the data and code sharing mindset of the Python communities, make Python very appealing.