Date of Images:

Post-Event: 2/5/2024, 2/6/2024

Pre-Event: 1/24/2024, 1/25/2024

Date of Next Image:

Unknown

Summary:

The Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) and Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and California Institute of Technology derived the surface water extent maps using the OPERA Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWx) products and prototypes.

The OPERA prototype DSWx from Sentinel-1 (S1) was used to create two water surface extent maps for February 5, 2024 (6 PM PST) and February 6, 2024 (6 AM PST). These maps depict areas that were inundated due to high rainfall due to back-to-back Atmospheric Rivers in California, USA. The inundation maps were created by stitching relevant tiles from the layers within the DSWx-S1 prototype.

The water change map is derived from OPERA prototype DSWx from Sentinel-1 (S1) for two pairs of dates: between January 25, 2024 (6 AM PST) and February 06, 2024 (6 AM PST) and between January 24, 2024 (6 PM PST) and February 05, 2024 (6 PM PST). These maps depict areas of new water coverage that may have resulted from high rainfall due to back-to-back Atmospheric Rivers (ARs) in California, USA. The water change maps were created by taking the difference between the water extent before and after the ARs.

The results posted here are preliminary and unvalidated results, primarily intended to aid the field response and people who wanted to have a rough first look at the inundation extent. The ARIA-share website has always focused on posting preliminary results as fast as possible for disaster response.

The post-processed products are available to download at https://aria-share.jpl.nasa.gov/202402-California_storm/DSWx-S1. The OPERA prototype DSWx-S1 is still under development and is not yet in production. Production of DSWx-S1 is expected to begin in Summer 2024. For more information about the OPERA project and other products visit https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/go/opera.

For more information about the Dynamic Surface Water eXtent product suite, please refer to the DSWx Product page: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/go/opera/products/dswx-product-suite

Suggested Use:

The OPERA proto-type DSWx-S1 Water products classifies the OPERA RTC-S1 input imagery into ‘not water’, ‘water’, and ‘inundated vegetation’ with the masks such as layover/shadow mask and HAND mask.

Areas classified as "open water" are blue.
Areas classified as "inundated vegetation" are green.
Light gray areas are flagged in the HAND mask. The Height Above Nearest Drainage (HAND) mask delineates regions where the terrain's elevation exceeds a specified threshold relative to the height above nearest drainage point, indicating areas less likely to be the subject of direct inundation.
Dark Gray areas are flagged in the layover/shadow mask. The layover/shad mask identifies zones that are either occluded by topographic features taller than the surrounding landscape (layover) or are not illuminated by the radar signal due to obstruction by these elevated features (shadow), leading to potential voids in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery.
Areas with no water detected are transparent.

This layer is meant to provide users with a quick view for water/no-water. Invalid data classes ( layover/shadow mask and HAND mask) are also provided to indicate areas in which the binary classification does not provide water/no-water classification.

Satellite/Sensor:

Copernicus Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)

Resolution:

30 meters

Credits:

NASA JPL-Caltech ARIA and OPERA Teams, NASA, NASA Disasters Program

Sentinel-1 data were accessed through the Copernicus Open Hub and the Alaska Satellite Facility server. The product contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2024), processed by the European Space Agency and analyzed by the NASA-JPL/Caltech ARIA and OPERA team. This product was derived from preliminary OPERA processing.

Product POCs:

Jungkyo Jung (Jungkyo.Jung@jpl.nasa.gov)
Alexander Handwerger (alexander.handwerger@jpl.nasa.gov)
Steven Chan (steventsz.k.chan@jpl.nasa.gov)

Esri REST Endpoint:

See URL section on right side of page

WMS Endpoint:

https://maps.disasters.nasa.gov/ags04/services/california_atmospheric_river_202402/aria_opera_dswx_watermaps/MapServer/WMSServer

Data Download:

https://aria-share.jpl.nasa.gov/202402-California_storm/DSWx-S1/

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