Nowcasting/Forecasting the Battlespace Environment

This effort will characterize the real world features and spatial structure of stressing atmospheric phenomena and demonstrate the feasibility of forecasting such phenomena using data-driven infrared background models. Our approach to this problem involves locating and identifying stressing backgrounds contained in measurements and extracting key structure characteristics in a form that allows their insertion into radiance codes such as MODTRAN and SAMM2. Techniques proposed herein cover spatial and temporal domains. Atmospheric features will be properly located in the global/geophysical environment, accounting for the dependence of real world phenomena on time, latitude, and season, in order to ensure real world fidelity. The feasibility of nowcasting and forecasting these clutter sources will be assessed, and prediction methodologies will be demonstrated when practical.