Maria Soledad Fernandez Carvelo

I studied a bachelor's degree in physics as well as a master's degree in Geophisics and Meteorology at the University of Granada. I was working as Optical Engineer (signaling department) for a few years. Thereafter, I joined to the Color Imaging Lab group at the department of Optics of the University of Granada on the project “Automatic enhancement of images degraded by the atmosphere with multispectral techniques in the visible and infrared”. Nowadays, I am pursuing a PhD in the Atmospheric Physics group (GFAT) at the department of Applied Physic of University of Granada which focus on advanced remote sensing techniques for the study of atmospheric aerosol (LIDAR Technique) which is financed by a national grant for research initiation.

EDUCATION

- 2013: BSc. & MSc. Physics
- 2019: MSc. Meteorology (Physics of the Atmosphere)

RESEARCH INTERESTS

My research interests involve atmospheric optic, color, spectral imaging, dehazing, atmospheric aerosol and clouds interaction, remote sensing, fluorescence and LIDAR technique.

Scopus Publications

Intercomparison of WRF-chem aerosol schemes during a dry Saharan dust outbreak in Southern Iberian Peninsula
Miguel Pino-Carmona, José A. Ruiz-Arias, Sol Fernández-Carvelo, Juan A. Bravo-Aranda, and Lucas Alados-Arboledas
Elsevier BV



Synergy between Short-Range Lidar and In Situ Instruments for Determining the Atmospheric Boundary Layer Lidar Ratio
Andres Esteban Bedoya-Velásquez, Romain Ceolato, Gloria Titos, Juan Antonio Bravo-Aranda, Andrea Casans, Diego Patrón, Sol Fernández-Carvelo, Juan Luis Guerrero-Rascado, and Lucas Alados-Arboledas
MDPI AG
Short-range elastic backscatter lidar (SR-EBL) systems are remote sensing instruments for studying low atmospheric boundary layer processes. This work presents a field campaign oriented to filling the gap between the near-surface aerosol processes regarding aerosol radiative properties and connecting them with the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), centering attention on the residual layer and the ABL transition periods. A Colibri Aerosol Lidar (CAL) instrument, based on the short-range lidar with high spatio-temporal resolution, was used for the first time in the ACTRIS AGORA facility (Andalusian Global Observatory of the Atmosphere) in Granada (Spain). This study showed the possibility of combining lidar and in situ measurements in the lowermost 150 m. The results address, on the one hand, the characterization of the short-range lidar for developing a method to find the calibration constant of the system and to correct the incomplete overlap to further data exploitation. On the other hand, relevant radiative properties such as the temporal series of the aerosol lidar ratio and extinction coefficient were quantified. The campaign was divided in three different periods based on the vehicular emission peak in the early mornings, namely, before, during, and after the emission peak. For before and after the emission peak data classification, aerosol properties presented closer values; however, large variability was obtained after the emission peak reaching the maximum values of extinction and a lidar ratio up to 51.5 ± 11.9 (Mm)−1 and 36.0 ± 10.5 sr, respectively. During the emission peaks, the values reached for extinction and lidar ratio were up to 136.8 ± 26.5 (Mm)−1 and 119.0 ± 22.7 sr, respectively.


Four Years of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Height Retrievals Using COSMIC-2 Satellite Data
Ginés Garnés-Morales, Maria João Costa, Juan Antonio Bravo-Aranda, María José Granados-Muñoz, Vanda Salgueiro, Jesús Abril-Gago, Sol Fernández-Carvelo, Juana Andújar-Maqueda, Antonio Valenzuela, Inmaculada Foyo-Moreno,et al.
MDPI AG
This work aimed to study the atmospheric boundary layer height (ABLH) from COSMIC-2 refractivity data, endeavoring to refine existing ABLH detection algorithms and scrutinize the resulting spatial and seasonal distributions. Through validation analyses involving different ground-based methodologies (involving data from lidar, ceilometer, microwave radiometers, and radiosondes), the optimal ABLH determination relied on identifying the lowest refractivity gradient negative peak with a magnitude at least τ% times the minimum refractivity gradient magnitude, where τ is a fitting parameter representing the minimum peak strength relative to the absolute minimum refractivity gradient. Different τ values were derived accounting for the moment of the day (daytime, nighttime, or sunrise/sunset) and the underlying surface (land or sea). Results show discernible relations between ABLH and various features, notably, the land cover and latitude. On average, ABLH is higher over oceans (≈1.5 km), but extreme values (maximums > 2.5 km, and minimums < 1 km) are reached over intertropical lands. Variability is generally subtle over oceans, whereas seasonality and daily evolution are pronounced over continents, with higher ABLHs during daytime and local wintertime (summertime) in intertropical (middle) latitudes.


Band selection for dehazing algorithms applied to hyperspectral images in the visible range
Sol Fernández-Carvelo, Miguel Ángel Martínez-Domingo, Eva M. Valero, Javier Romero, Juan Luis Nieves, and Javier Hernández-Andrés
MDPI AG
Images captured under bad weather conditions (e.g., fog, haze, mist, dust, etc.), suffer from poor contrast and visibility, and color distortions. The severity of this degradation depends on the distance, the density of the atmospheric particles and the wavelength. We analyzed eight single image dehazing algorithms representative of different strategies and originally developed for RGB images, over a database of hazy spectral images in the visible range. We carried out a brute force search to find the optimum three wavelengths according to a new combined image quality metric. The optimal triplet of monochromatic bands depends on the dehazing algorithm used and, in most cases, the different bands are quite close to each other. According to our proposed combined metric, the best method is the artificial multiple exposure image fusion (AMEF). If all wavelengths within the range 450–720 nm are used to build a sRGB renderization of the imagaes, the two best-performing methods are AMEF and the contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE), with very similar quality of the dehazed images. Our results show that the performance of the algorithms critically depends on the signal balance and the information present in the three channels of the input image. The capture time can be considerably shortened, and the capture device simplified by using a triplet of bands instead of the full wavelength range for dehazing purposes, although the selection of the bands must be performed specifically for a given algorithm.