Thermal Water Discharge Anomaly
Relative thermal contrast at cooling water and industrial outfalls, taken against the ambient water around them.
Brightness temperature contrast at discharge points, against a local baseline drawn from the surrounding water.
Coastal discharge waters, where thermal contrast is mapped against ambient.
WHAT IT FINDS
What it detects.
| Material | Typical setting | What can confuse it |
|---|---|---|
| Thermal discharge plumes (relative contrast) | Power plant cooling outfalls, industrial discharge, and hot springs | Atmospheric water vapour, surface roughness, and any cloud at all |
METHOD
How it works.
Calibrated reflectance goes in, and every pixel is fitted against a public reference library.
Brightness temperature ingest
The thermal band is read at the archive's own brightness temperature level. No emissivity model is applied, so what comes out is not a kinetic temperature and is not presented as one.
Ambient baseline
A local background is computed from water pixels around the outfall, so the plume is expressed against its own river or bay rather than against a global value.
Contrast mapping
The difference field is mapped and contoured. Pixels where cloud, glint or land adjacency make the reading unusable go into the not-evaluated class.
Extent, not dispersion modelling
The plume outline and its area are reported. No mixing model, decay curve or discharge rate is fitted, because none has been validated.
SPECIFICATIONS
What you get, and what it runs on.
Conditions it needs
Method and checks are documented in Axine Applied Spectroscopy Paper #3 · Section 6.2.
Scope
Relative contrast at the water surface, never an absolute temperature. Cloud-free passes are required.
RUN IT OVER YOUR GROUND
Run this layer over your own area.
Order processing over your area of interest, or a tasked capture where the archive has nothing usable. Imagery access is never charged for: a plan buys the models.
COMPLEMENTARY ANALYTICS
Related layers.
Surface Water Quality
Screening for pigment and turbidity over inland water, using published fits applied unchanged.
Acid Drainage Screening
Screening for precipitate coatings along discharge channels, with a ferric floor gating the read.
Tailings Dam Stability & Seepage
Monitors moisture and sulfate weathering on exposed embankment faces, differenced across dates.