Using airborne hyperspectral scanner to monitoring the oceanic thermal plume produced by the surface discharge of the cooling water from Angra dos Reis nuclear power plant

• Main Authors: Enio S. C. Esposito, Orlando D. Zaloti Júnior, Ruy M. de Castro, Lécio H. Salim, Romero da C. Moreira, João A. Lorenzzetti, Jefferson V. Bandeira, Eduardo V. D. Lucca
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal de Uberlândia 2005-04-01
• Series: Revista Brasileira de Cartografia
• Subjects: remote sensing; hyperspectral scanner; sea surface temperature; thermal image processing; thermal plume
• Online Access: http://www.rbc.ufrj.br/_pdf_57_2005/57_1_08.pdf

This paper describes the first results obtained using a hyperspectral scanner system (HSS) and field measurements of the sea surface temperature to map a heated liquid effluent jet (plume) produced by the surface discharge of the cooling water from two nuclear power plants into a rather closed bay in southeastern Brazil. The adopted methodology is based on the flight and imaging of study area using the HSS sensor, collecting temperature data from the sea surface and acquiring the imagery at the same time and finally, the statistical analysis of data collected in the field and those ones from the imageries. At this phase, beyond the identification of the best suited IVT channel for the characterization of temperature variations of the thermal plume, coefficients were also generated to create an image of this channel with corrected temperature values for the effects caused by atmosphere acting in data collected by the sensor. Results obtained show that this sensor and the used metodology of data acquisition and processing are well suitable for the study and the monitoring of local thermal plumes. The absolute temperature values from the sea surface obtained from the images after the use of coefficients obtained from statistical analysis agree in average with the measured values from the field with an uncertainty of 0,8oC.