A Streaming Tensor Decomposition Analysis of of a Multi-Ceilometer Based
Lidar Aerosol Network.
Abstract
Aerosols are collections of suspended solid or liquid particles in the
gaseous atmosphere, such as dust, sulfates and nitrate molecules, black
and organic carbon, sea salt ocean droplets that can absorb and scatter
solar radiation, act as nuclei in forming liquid rain and ice droplets
in clouds, influence local convective storms, tropical cyclones and can
destabilize the planetary boundary layer height (PBLH). Aerosol
observations are required on an hourly basis to follow the changes in
the PBLH. Multiple satellite-based instruments are becoming available to
observe aerosol distributions. However, they still mostly measure
total-column quantities or vertical profiles with low-resolution near
the ground, limited frequent coverage leading to a difficult task of
untangling the Planetary Boundary Layer information from the column
measurement. We have built a multi-sensor ground-based observatory
network of ceilometer instruments distributed over the US which provide
near real-time, streaming of high-resolution aerosol profiles up to 15km
from the ground. We propose to use a novel tensor decomposition method
to analyze the stream of aerosol profiles. The streaming tensor
decomposition method enables one to analyze Mixed Boundary Layer Height
(MBLH) acquired from our observation network in near real time and over
long time data archive records. The tensor has been formed using 3
dimensions, a station site location, time of day and day with a value of
the MBLH derived from a machine learning holistic edge detection
algorithm. The normalized output results from the tensor decomposition
method consist of high order tensors components with coefficients
analogous to eigenvalues. We will show the time dependence of the
dominant components of MBLH. These dominant components will show the
correlations of MBLH over 24 hours over multiple regions. We can also
use tensor decomposition to analyze climate data records of MBLH
(monthly, seasonal or annual).