Warning message

Member access has been temporarily disabled. Please try again later.
The POLARIS website is undergoing a major upgrade that began Friday, October 11th at 5:00 PM PDT. The new upgraded site will be available no later than Monday, October 21st. Until that time, the current site will be visible but logins are disabled.

 

Disclaimer: This material is being kept online for historical purposes. Though accurate at the time of publication, it is no longer being updated. The page may contain broken links or outdated information, and parts may not function in current web browsers. Visit https://espo.nasa.gov for information about our current projects.

 

Applying Tipping Point Theory to Remote Sensing Science to Improve Early...

Krishnamurthy, P. K. R., J. B. Fisher, D. Schimel, and P. M. Kareiva (2020), Applying Tipping Point Theory to Remote Sensing Science to Improve Early Warning Drought Signals for Food Security, Earth's Future, 8, doi:10.1029/2019EF001456.
Abstract: 

Famines have long been associated with drought. With the severity of droughts growing in association with climate change, there is increasing pressure to do a better job predicting famines and delivering international aid to avert human suffering and civil instability. We examine recent advances in remote sensing technology, focusing on the latency, historical availability and spatial and temporal scales of the data these satellites provide. Because of their global coverage, seven variables derived from satellite observations emerge as especially pertinent to drought and famine: precipitation (TRMM/GPM), groundwater (GRACE/GRACE‐FO), snow (MODIS), soil moisture (SMOS, SMAP, Sentinel‐1), evapotranspiration (MODIS, ECOSTRESS), vegetation health (Landsat, AVHRR, MODIS, SPOT) and chlorophyll fluorescence (OCO‐2). We discuss tipping point theory as a possible framework for taking advantage of long time series of these satellite data where they exist in order to enhance the effectiveness of existing famine early warning systems.

PDF of Publication: 
Download from publisher's website.
Research Program: 
Terrestrial Hydrology Program (THP)
Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Program (CCEP)
Mission: 
SMAP