Juan-Carlos Jimenez

University of Valencia | UV · Laboratorio de Procesado de Imagenes (LPI)

Over the last decades, the Amazon rainforest has been hit by multiple severe drought events. Here, we assess the severity and spatial extent of the extreme drought years 2005, 2010 and 2015/16 in the Amazon region and their impacts on the regional carbon cycle. As an indicator of drought stress in the Amazon rainforest, we use the widely applied ma...

This Report provides a comprehensive, objective, open, transparent, systematic, and rigorous scientific assessment of the state of the Amazon’s ecosystems, current trends, and their implications for the long-term well-being of the region, as well as opportunities and policy relevant options for conservation and sustainable development.

In our current global warming climate, the growth of record-breaking heat waves (HWs) is expected to increase in its frequency and intensity. Consequently, the considerably growing and agglomerated world’s urban population becomes more exposed to serious heat-related health risks. In this context, the study of Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) inten...

Several large-scale drivers of both anthropogenic and natural environmental changes are interacting nonlinearly in the transition zone between eastern Amazonia and the adjacent Cerrado, considered to be another Brazilian agricultural frontier. Land-use change for agrobusiness expansion together with climate change in the transition zone between eas...

In June 2021 a new extreme flood was reported in the Amazon Basin, the largest hydrological system on Earth. During this event water level was above 29 m (the emergency threshold) for 91 days at Manaus station (Brazil), surpassing even the previous historical flood of 2012. Since the late 1990s, 9 extreme floods occurred, while only 8 events were r...

This Report provides a comprehensive, objective, open, transparent, systematic, and rigorous scientific assessment of the state of the Amazon’s ecosystems, current trends, and their implications for the long-term well-being of the region, as well as opportunities and policy relevant options for conservation and sustainable development.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a variable of the climatic system and hydrological cycle that plays an important role in biosphere–atmosphere–hydrosphere interactions. In this paper, remote sensing-based ET estimates with the simplified surface energy balance index (S-SEBI) model using Landsat 8 data were compared with in situ lysimeter measurements for...

Several large-scale drivers of both anthropogenic and natural environmental changes are interacting nonlinearly in the transition zone between eastern Amazonia and the adjacent Cerrado, considered to be the new Brazilian agricultural frontier. Land-use change for agrobusiness expansion together with climate change in the transition zone between eas...

Over the last decades, the Amazon rainforest was hit by multiple severe drought events. Here we assess the severity and spatial extent of the extreme drought years 2005, 2010, and 2015/2016 in the Amazon region and their impacts on the carbon cycle. As an indicator of drought stress in the Amazon rainforest, we use the widely applied maximum cumula...

Land and Sea Surface Temperatures (LST and SST) are both recognized as Essential Climate Variables, and are routinely retrieved by a wealth of satellites. However, for validated approaches, the latest data are usually not available to the general public. We offer to bridge this gap, by using Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) Spinning Enhanced Visibl...

Amazonian ecosystems are major biodiversity hotspots and carbon sinks that may lose species to extinction and become carbon sources due to extreme dry or warm conditions. We investigated the seasonal patterns of high-resolution solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) measured by the satellite Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) across the Am...

Amazonian tropical forests play a significant role in global water, carbon and energy cycles. Considering the importance of this biome and climate change projections, the monitoring of vegetation status of these rainforests becomes of significant importance. In this context vegetation temperature is presented as a key variable linked with plant phy...

Amazon tropical forests and the semiarid Northeast Brazil (NEB) region have registered very severe droughts during the last two decades, with a frequency that may have exceeded natural climate variability. Severe droughts impact the physiological response of Amazon forests, decreasing the availability to absorb atmospheric CO2, as well as biodivers...

Purpose of Review We provide a comprehensive review of the empirical and modelling approaches used to quantify the radiation–vegetation interactions related to vegetation temperature, leaf optical properties linked to pigment absorption and chlorophyll fluorescence emission, and of their capability to monitor vegetation health. Part 1 provides an o...

Evapotranspiration (ET) is considered a key variable in the understanding of the Amazonian tropical forests and their response to climate change. Remote-Sensing (RS) based evapotranspiration models are presented as a feasible means in order to provide accurate spatially-distributed ET estimates over this region. In this work, the performance of fou...

Amazonian tropical forests play a significant role in global water, carbon and energy cycles. Satellite remote sensing is presented as a feasible means in order to monitor these forests. In particular, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is amongst major tools for studying this region. Nevertheless, MODIS operative surface var...

Precipitable water vapor (PWV) is a meteorological variable that influences the main processes that occur in the atmosphere. It is not a homogeneous variable, but varies both temporally and spatially according to local conditions. This study analyzes the spatial and temporal variability of the PWV in Peru using MODIS satellite data (MOD05/MYD05 pro...

Amazon forests experienced recent severe droughts in an anomalous short period induced by different mechanisms and had different length periods and spatial patterns. Droughts of 2005 and 2010 were attributed to anomalous sea surface temperature over the Tropical Atlantic during the dry season, but the 2010 drought was more severe and remained for a...

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation exerts a large influence on global climate regimes and on the global carbon cycle. Although El Niño is known to be associated with a reduction of the global total land carbon sink, results based on prognostic models or measurements disagree over the relative contribution of photosynthesis to the reduced sink. Here,...

The forests in the Aysén region (ca. 43-49 °S, Chile) have a high degree of wilderness and cover more than 4.8 million hectares, making it one of the largest areas of subantarctic forest in the Southern Hemisphere. The impact of global warming on this region is poorly documented. The main objective of this work was to analyze the normalized differe...

The recent 2015–2016 El Niño (EN) event was considered as strong as the EN in 1997–1998. Given such magnitude, it was expected to result in extreme warming and moisture anomalies in tropical areas. Here we characterize the spatial patterns of temperature anomalies and drought over tropical forests, including tropical South America (Amazonia), Afric...

p>Assessment of rural fire severity is fundamental to evaluate fire damages and to analyze recovery processes in a low-cost and efficient way. Burnt areas covering shrubs and grasslands were estimated in more than 30,000 km² in Argentina from December 2016 to January 2017. The study area presented in this work is located in the South of...

Land surface temperature (LST) is one of the sources of input data for modeling land surface processes. The Landsat satellite series is the only operational mission with more than 30 years of archived thermal infrared imagery from which we can retrieve LST. Unfortunately, stray light artifacts were observed in Landsat-8 TIRS data, mostly affecting...

The Temperature and Emissivity Separation (TES) algorithm was originally developed for the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER). This paper focuses on improving the TES algorithm. The main modification is the replacement of the normalized emissivity module with a new module, which is based on the smoothing of spect...

Mechanisms of heat transfer and Newton's law of cooling are introduced in the first physics and biophysics courses for a number of university science majors. Several papers have commented on the derivation of the exponential decay and validity of this law. However, the description of the phenomena is traditionally described without consideration of...

Due to problems in the thermal infrared sensor on-board the Landsat-8 satellite, Landsat-7 (L7) can be an interesting alternative source of thermal data because it is the only source of well-calibrated, free, high-resolution data. To contribute to the quality of thermal data, a vicarious calibration (VC) of the enhanced thematic mapper instrument a...

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the main driver of interannual climate extremes in Amazonia and other tropical regions. The current 2015/2016 EN event was expected to be as strong as the EN of the century in 1997/98, with extreme heat and drought over most of Amazonian rainforests. Here we show that this protracted EN event, combined wit...

The Physics Demo Project at the University of Valencia (www.uv.es/fisicademos) has developed a collection of physics demonstrations to be used during lectures. It consists of more than 130 experimental demos about different physics topics. More than 30 professors borrow them whenever they lecture on physics in any of our 40 courses in 17 different...

The beginning of the XXI century is characterized by the intensification of the existing global warming situation and for a series of drastic global meteorological events. Particularly, during the winter season a series of extreme temperature episodes affecting large areas of the northern hemisphere have been produced. In this paper, these episodes...

Land Surface Temperature (LST) is one of the key parameters in the physics of land-surface processes on regional and global scales, combining the results of all surface-atmosphere interactions and energy fluxes between the surface and the atmosphere. With the advent of the ESA's Sentinel 3 (S3) satellite, accurate LST retrieval methodologies exploi...

With the current remote sensing technology developments, and in particular those at L-band (1.2–1.4 GHz) frequencies such as the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity and the Soil Moisture Active and Passive missions, new approaches concerning passive microwave and its combination with existing optical technologies have become of special interest for th...

High-resolution thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing has a wide range of applications. In this paper, we describe the different applications and requirements identified in a literature review and during a consultation meeting with researcher experts in different fields. As a result, more than 30 applications were identified within three different...

Remote sensing and climate digital products have become increasingly available in recent years. Access to these products has favored a variety of Digital Earth studies, such as the analysis of the impact of global warming over different biomes. The study of the Amazon forest response to drought has recently received particular attention from the sc...

The Meteosat Second Generation-Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (MSG-SEVIRI) instrument provides observations of half the globe every 15 min, at low spatial resolution. These data are an invaluable tool to observe daily to yearly cycle of land surface temperature (LST), as well as for various early warning systems. However, advanced al...

Calibration and validation (cal/val) are key activities to test the data quality acquired from satellite-based instruments, as well as to report the accuracy of derived products such as the land surface temperature (LST). Calibration of thermal infrared (TIR) data and validation of LST products at low spatial resolution requires the identification...

This paper presents the Global Atmospheric Profiles derived from Reanalysis Information (GAPRI) database, which was designed for earth surface temperature retrieval. GAPRI is a comprehensive compilation of selected atmospheric vertical profiles at global scale which can be used for radiative transfer simulation in order to obtain generalized algori...

Advances in information technologies and accessibility to climate and satellite data in recent years have favored the development of web-based tools with user-friendly interfaces in order to facilitate the dissemination of geo/biophysical products. These products are useful for the analysis of the impact of global warming over different biomes. In...

The Cordillera Blanca, located in the central zone of the Andes Mountains in Peru, has shown a retreat in its glaciers. This paper presents a trend analysis of the glacier area over the groups of Nevados Caullaraju-Pastoruri from 1975 to 2010 using Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery. In the case of the Nevados Pastoruri/Tuco, the study period w...

Remote sensing techniques are a useful tool for continuous observation of the Earth at global scale. However, products derived from remote sensing data require a rigorous validation using in situ data. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is not really a sounding instrument, but it does have 16 infrared bands (bands 20-36 covering...

The importance of land surface temperature (LST) retrieved from high to medium spatial resolution remote sensing data for many environmental studies, particularly the applications related to water resources management over agricultural sites, was a key factor for the final decision of including a thermal infrared (TIR) instrument on board the Lands...

In this paper, we analyze the feasibility of applying the temperature and emissivity separation (TES) algorithm to thermal-infrared data acquired with three bands of the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) onboard the Meteosat Second Generation platform (SEVTES). The performance of the SEVTES algorithm was tested using data simul...

This document describes the theoretical basis for the Land Surface Temperature (LST) product from Sentinel-3 (S3) data. The proposed LST algorithms are the split- window and the dual-angle algorithms, which will be combined over heterogeneous or homogeneous areas.

This document presents the analysis of LST temporal series extracted from the standard AATSR level-2 product and the SEN4LST product over a region of the Iberian Peninsula and for the 2003-2009 time period.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported a significant rise of the global mean surface temperature over the last 100. years, with a rate of warming over the last few decades almost double that over the last 100. years. The rate of warming is higher at land surfaces over the Northern Hemisphere (NH), and particularly extreme war...

[1] In recent years, several studies have addressed the response of Amazonian forests to drought by analyzing anomalies in vegetation indices retrieved from satellite sensors. Attention was paid to Amazonia because of two major droughts in 2005 and 2010, which were considered amongst the most severe in a century. These drought events have been asso...

High resolution thermal infrared remote sensing can have a wide range of applications. In this chapter we describe the different applications and requirements identified after a revision study in the framework of the Fuegosat Synthesis Study (FSS). This project was funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), and the three main objectives were: (i) r...

Atmospheric corrections for hyperspectral thermal images acquired with nadir, horizontal, and oblique views have typically relied on atmospheric modelling software, such as Moderate Resolution Atmospheric Transmission MODTRAN, to estimate atmospheric parameters. Data-only corrections, which require only information from the scene, are more versatil...

The surface urban heat island SUHI effect is defined as the increased surface temperatures in urban areas in contrast to cooler surrounding rural areas. In this article, the evaluation of the SUHI effect in the city of Madrid Spain from thermal infrared TIR remote-sensing data is presented. The data were obtained from the framework of the Dual-use...

Land surface Temperature (LST) is one of the key parameters in the physics of land-surface processes on regional and global scales, combining the results of all surface-atmosphere interactions and energy fluxes between the surface and the atmosphere. An adequate characterization of LST distribution and its temporal evolution requires measurements w...

Doñana Biological Reserve (RBD) has extensive and varied areas that allow remote sensing images using high, medium and low resolution for the development of calibration / validation activities (cal/val). To find potential areas for activities of cal/val, the study is based in the homogeneity of the land surface temperature (LST) using MODIS images...

This document is the final report of the SEN4LST project. It includes a review of land surface temperature retrieval algorithms as well as methodologies for atmospheric correction and cloud screening. Candidate algorithms to be applied to Sentinel-3 OLCI & SLSTR data were selected and validated from simulated S3 data and also using MERIS/AATSR pair...

This document provides a review of candidate atmospheric correction methodologies and land surface emissivity/temperature correction algorithms to be applied to Sentinels 2 and 3 data. The document also explores the adaptation of these algorithms to Sentinels characteristics, as well as a sensitivity analysis of the different algorithms.

Recent advances in spatial and spectral resolution of satellite imagery as well as in processing techniques are opening new possibilities of fine-scale vegetation analysis with interesting applications in natural resource management. Here we present the main results of a study carried out in Sierra Morena, Cordoba southern Spain, aimed at assessing...

In this work we explore the synergistic use of future MSI instrument on board Sentinel-2 platform and OLCI/SLSTR instruments on board Sentinel-3 platform in order to improve LST products currently derived from the single AATSR instrument on board the ENVI-SAT satellite. For this purpose, the high spatial resolution data from Setinel2/MSI will be us...

In this work a methodology to provide an emissivity map of an urban area is presented. The methodology is applied to the city of Madrid (Spain) using data provided by the Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner (AHS) in 2008. From the data a classification map with twelve different urban materials was created. Each material was then characterized by a diffe...