A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M. Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2005

Clouds are one of the main weather phenomenon which determine the over all weather condition of a location. The cloud coverage and the path it travels have great implications on the climate of a place. For that reason cloud tracking, which is the determination of cloud speed and direction has been one of the most important parts in forecasting weather conditions in a particular location. The method of determining the cloud vectors is based on the calculation of the area and centroids of the target clouds and then plotting these points on the image for a series of cloud images of one-hour duration. Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS 5) is used mostly for cloud tracking in the following method. The target cloud centroid points of the first image are compared with the image after one hour. The identification of the cloud points in the second image is done by the triangulation method of the point in respective images. With the identification of the cloud points in the next image the distance and the angle between them were calculated and added to the attribute table of the image. The angles are being calculated for the selected points in the image and then vectors plotted on the image against respective cloud direction angles. The distance and angles were calculated for only selected points in the view between two themes with one-hour interval. The study was done to determine the cloud motion vectors towards Bhutan in May 2004 to December and develop a way to determine the vectors.