On Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing of Plastic Pollution in Natural Waters

Plastic pollution in the world’s natural waters is of growing concern and currently receiving significant attention. However, remote sensing of marine plastic litter is still in the developmental stage. Most progress has been made in spectral remote sensing using visible to short-wave infrared wavel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRemote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 11; no. 18; p. 2159
Main Authors Goddijn-Murphy, Lonneke, Williamson, Benjamin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.09.2019
Subjects
Air temperature
Cameras
Detection
Infrared radiation
Litter
Natural waters
Plastic debris
plastic litter
Plastic pollution
Plastics
Pollution
Radiative transfer
Remote sensing
Sea surface temperature
Sensors
Short wave radiation
Temperature
Temperature effects
Temperature gradients
thermal infrared
Unmanned aerial vehicles
Water pollution
Wavelengths
Weather forecasting
United Kingdom > UK
Netherlands
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Summary:Plastic pollution in the world’s natural waters is of growing concern and currently receiving significant attention. However, remote sensing of marine plastic litter is still in the developmental stage. Most progress has been made in spectral remote sensing using visible to short-wave infrared wavelengths where optical physics applies. Thermal infrared (TIR) sensing could potentially monitor plastic water pollution but has not been studied in detail. We applied radiative transfer theory to predict TIR sensitivity to changes in the surface fraction of water covered by plastic litter and found that the temperature difference between the water surface and the surroundings controls the TIR signal. Hence, we mapped this difference for various months and times of the day using global SST (sea surface temperature) and t2m (temperature at 2 m height) hourly estimates from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), ERA5. The maps show how SST-t2m difference varied, altering the anticipated effectivity of TIR floating plastic litter remote sensing. We selected several locations of interest to predict the effectivity of TIR sensing of the plastic surface fraction. TIR remote sensing has promising potential and is expected to be more effective in areas with a high air–sea temperature difference.
ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs11182159