Analysing MODIS hydroclimate data with NASA's AppEEARS tool for preliminary study

Abstract

The continual advances of satellite remote sensing technology have led to growing number of hydro- meteorological data, available for use in various disciplines. However, the conventional ways of utilising and extracting data from satellite imagery tiles often involves large amount of data to be downloaded, followed by a suite of processing procedures to extract the intended information. As the number of earth observations continue to increase unprecedentedly alongside issues with rapid climate change, there is a need to simplify and streamline data access and processing methods. Recently, NASA has introduced the Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AppEEARS) tool which provides analysis-ready data that users can download via point or area sampling. This tool not only significantly reduces the amount of data users need to download but is also beneficial for users without geographic information backgrounds. This study aims to present the initial results for MODIS hydroclimatic data, i.e., leaf area index, evapotranspiration extracted using the AppEEARS tool and GPM rainfall data for Kelantan River Basin from 2010 to 2018. The results found normal distribution for all variables and decreasing (increasing) trend for ET and LAI (rainfall) with rates of change estimated to be 1.13/9-year, -0.98 mm/9-year and 4.52 mm/9-year, respectively.