965 
2008 
A DUST-STORM PROCESS DYNAMIC MONITORING WITH MULTI-TEMPORAL 
MODIS DATA 
DI Mei, LU Xiushan, SUN Lin, WANG Ping 
Geomatics College, ShanDong University of Science and Technology,ShanDong Qingdao 266510,China 
dimei666@ 163.com, sunlin6@ 126.com,pingwsd@ 163 .com 
KEY WORDS: Dust Storm; Dynamic Monitoring; Multi-Temporal Data; Terra/Aqua MODIS 
ABSTRACT: 
In recent years, the frequency of dust storm is rising. Dust storm can impact the climate changes and cause great damages to people. 
It is very necessary to monitor the disasters accurately. In this paper, a dust storm process occurred in April, 2006 has been monitored. 
According to the reflect and absorb characteristic of dust storm, the scope of dust storm is extracted successfully;and the intensity 
grades are estimated, then the moving trace is monitored by multi-temporal data. Result shows greet agreement with the 
meteorological department monitoring. Conclusion can be gotten: the dust storm process dynamic monitoring with multi-temporal 
data has great application prospect. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Dust storm, a general name of sand storm and dust storm, is the 
weather condition which means strong wind draws much sand 
and dust near the ground surface into the sky, making air very 
foul, causing visibility less than 1km .Dust storm is a complex 
process influenced by the interaction of earth-atmosphere 
system, mainly caused by high wind speed, bared soil and dry 
air condition etc. It often takes place in arid and semi-arid areas. 
In recent years, the frequency of dust storm is rising. Dust storm 
can impact the climate changes and cause great damage to 
people. It is very necessary to monitor the disasters timely and 
accurately. 
At present, the ground based measurement method and remote 
sensing technology are two main methods for monitoring dust 
storm (Li Haiping, Xiong Liya,Zhuang Dafang, 2003). When 
dust storm happens, the environmental condition is often very 
bad. The sites for measuring dust storm are usually laid sparsely. 
As a result, because of low temporal and spatial resolution, 
traditional ground based measurement method cannot meet the 
requirements of dust storm monitoring and forecasting very well. 
The technology of satellite remote sensing has many advantages, 
such as: wide coverage, continuous in the space and monitoring 
natural disasters quickly, so it can act as an important role in the 
dust storm monitoring. Remote sensing can monitor the scope 
of dust storm, its intensity grade and its moving trace. 
Lots of researchers in China and abroad have done numerous 
experiments on monitoring dust storm by the technology of 
satellite remote sensing. Luo Jingning (Luo Jingning,Fan 
Yida,Shi Peijun,2003) has constructed a comparable dust storm 
intensity index to solve this problem: because of different 
satellite platforms ,monitoring time and areas, a comparable 
monitored result cannot be given by using multi-source remote 
sensing data; Guo Ni (Guo Ni,Liang Yun,2006) has constructed 
two dust indexes to discriminate dust storm processes happened 
in 2002-2005; Li Qing (Li Qing,Wang Qiao,Wang Wenjie,2006) 
has monitored a strong dust storm process occurred in the 
northwest of China in 2003 by MODIS data; Liu Sanchao (Liu 
Sanchao,Liu Qinhuo,Gao Maofang,2006) has extracted dust 
storm areas by combining Terra and Aqua images at daytime 
and nighttime;John J. Qu(John J. Qu, Menas Kafatos, 2006) has 
proposed a normalized difference dust index(NDDI) to identify 
dust and cloud; J. K. Roskovensky (J. K. Roskovensky ,K. N. 
Liou, 2005)has combined short-wave reflectance ratio tests with 
long-wave brightness temperature differences to produce 
individual parameters to detect cirrus and dust. However, many 
researchers only focused on accurately identifying whether a 
pixel is contaminated by dust storm and then limit the areas of 
dust storm distribution. In these years, more and more satellites 
have been sent to the space, it has become possible to make 
certain the moving trace of the dust storm using the 
multi-temporal satellite images obtained from different satellite 
sensors. In this paper, the scope of dust storm is extracted 
successfully and then the moving trace and intensity grades are 
monitored by multi-temporal data. The results can help related 
departments grasp the moving trends of dust storm in 
macroscopic view and provide a basis for them to make 
decisions. 
2. DATA 
In this paper, the data used to monitor dust storm disaster is 
MODIS data. MODIS sensors, boarded on both Terra and Aqua 
satellites, have 36 channels. Its spectrum range is 0.4pm~ 
14.385pm,covering from visible to infrared. At least 4 MODIS 
images can be obtained every day. The timeliness of data is 
increasing, so dust storm can be monitored dynamically. In this 
paper, 4 MODIS images are chose to monitor a dust storm 
process happened in northwest of China on April 16-17, 2006 
(see table 1).