The impact of rain, frost, seasonal cycle, and wind on sequences of high resolution urban SAR images

Kurzfassung

The TerraSAR-X satellite has been fully operational since nearly 6 years and has delivered a very large quantity of high resolution SAR images. Among these images one can find a number of repeated acquisitions of selected target areas tak-en with nearly identical imaging parameters. These image time series data often cover the full seasonal cycle of a target area and lend themselves well to small-scale change detec-tion; however, in the case of urban areas, we have to be aware of the quantitative impact of rain, frost and wind on high resolution SAR images. In particular, images of West-ern European cities are characterized by construction work concentrating on single buildings within a fully built-up city and by public green space changes. A quantitative analysis of urban time series data has to discriminate between defi-nite changes of the urban landscape and the transient im-pacts of rain, frost and wind. The critical issue is how to identify and characterize these transient phenomena.