Volume III, Issue V, May 2016 IJRSI ISSN 2321 – 2705 www.rsisinternational.org Page 95 Satellite Applications for Climate Change Studies with Special Reference to Agriculture B. Manikiam 1 , Kamsali Nagaraja 1 , Sethuraman Ganapathy Venkatasubramanian 2 1 Department of Physics, Bangalore University, Bengaluru - 560056 2 Centre for Environmental Studies, Anna University, Chennai - 600025 Abstract:-Recent times have witnessed large concern regarding the global climate change and its impacts on society. The process is complex and needs to be understood well so that appropriate combative measures can be taken up. The satellites, with their capability to provide global uniform data on a repetitive basis are proving to be an invaluable tool in the study of weather and climate changes in a quantitative manner. The weather data available with many countries for past several decades is being reanalyzed and a long term series data with satellite observations is being created. Several unique observations from satellites such as sea surface temperature, cloud water content, energy budget of earth-atmosphere system will contribute to our study of weather processes and likely changes. The satellites play a key role in providing valuable observations for assessing the impact of climate change. India has a series of remote sensing satellites namely INSAT and IRS satellites operating in geostationary and polar orbits. These satellites carry CCD based imaging sensors and provide imageries of the Earth in different spectral bands. The advantage of satellites is its capability to provide data over large areas thus providing a synoptic view of the region. The climate change studies require observations at high frequency and over large areas which is provided by satellites. The INSAT satellite is capable of monitoring various weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, winds, rainfall etc. and using computer models it is possible to assess the weather over large areas. With long term series of data over an area, the climate change is analyzed and potential changes in temperature and rainfall are assessed. The IRS series of satellites provide observations over the Earth features such as water resources, agriculture, forests, and soil conditions that are directly affected by climate change. Over the past 4 decades, India has developed databases on all important natural resources in the country and these databases will be very useful to assess the potential impacts of climate change. The paper highlights the role of satellites and describes case studies related to agriculture. Key Words: Remote Sensing, Natural Resources, Satellites, Agriculture, Climate Change I. INTRODUCTION The beginning of ISROs Space programme was in a humble way by launching of rockets for study of middle atmosphere under a United Nations programme. The site selected for rocket launching was Thumba near Tiruvananthapuram in Kerala, which lies near to Equator. Based on the rocket chaff movement, the wind conditions were studied and this led to very interesting aspects of equatorial electro jet, wind reversal during monsoon, temperature inversion etc. II. OPERATIONAL INDIAN SATELLITE PROGRAMME The Indian Space Programme was designed to meet country’s priorities such as weather monitoring, communication, natural resource mapping and ultimately provide valuable inputs to planning of country’s resources. This led to a series of satellite systems – IRS (Indian remote Sensing Satellites) and INSAT (Indian National Satellites). The IRS is a polar orbiting system moving across the poles. A typical IRS at an altitude of 800 kms will revisit the same area once in 22 days which is adequate to study the crop growth, forest changes, flow of water etc. The first IRS satellite was launched in 1982 and since then a series of satellites has been designed and launched (Fig. 1). 1996 1995/1997 1999 2001 2003 IRS-P3 WiFS, MOS, X-Ray IRS-P4 (OCEANSAT-1) OCM, MSMR TES STEP & STARE CONCEPT RESOURCESAT-1 LISS-3 (23.5) LISS-4 (5.8 M,) AWiFS (55 M) CARTOSAT -1 PAN (2.5 M) IRS-1C/1D LISS-3 (23/ 70 M), STEERABLE PAN (5.8 M), WiFS (188 M) 2005 Operational Earth Observation Satellites 2008 Fig. 1: Indian Operational satellites Remote sensing usually refers to the technology of acquiring information about the earth’s surface (land and ocean) and