Abstract:
A study was carried out to investigate the fractal properties of cloud shapes. Water vapor
images of clouds over the Indian Ocean region captured by the geostationary
meteorological satellite METEOSAT-7 during the period of 2008 August to 2009 July were
used in the present study. The fractal dimensions of cloud shapes have been calculated
using the area-perimeter relationship and the box-counting method. To improve the
extraction of cloud shapes, image preprocessing steps such as background subtraction and
noise filtering were applied. Cloud shapes at different colour values were extracted from
satellite images using the k-means clustering algorithm. The value of the fractal dimension
varies between 0.8 and 1.6. The results of this work agree well with related studies carried
out for both small and large clouds in the past. The average fractal dimension of clouds 7
km above ground level is 1.5±0.1.
