Patent ID: 7242803

Claim:
A system for detecting and enhancing meteorological imagery of dust clouds comprising: a collector for storing multispectral optical-spectrum imagery having multiple channels relating to different wavelengths across the visible, shortwave infrared, and thermal infrared portions of the optical spectrum, a processor operatively coupled to said collector, wherein the processor receives the multispectral optical-spectrum imagery and processes the digital data by: performing a numerical atmospheric correction for removal of molecular scatter within all of the visible-spectrum channels, based on radiative transfer calculations stored in pre-computed look-up tables and indexed as a function of solar and sensor geometry, determining the pixel background for each pixel of the image by combining known earth location with a terrestrial database, employing a background-dependent algorithm to compute the dust enhancement variable Δ, means for displaying the multispectral imagery coupled to the processor, wherein the means for displaying the multispectral imagery comprises a red, blue and green color for displaying the visible light spectrum via a hue/saturation decomposed color technique.