Combining UPerNet and ConvNeXt for Contrails Identification to reduce Global Warming

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel approach combining UPerNet and ConvNeXt architectures with specialized preprocessing for satellite images to improve aircraft contrail detection, aiming to mitigate climate change impacts.

Contribution

It introduces an innovative data preprocessing method and integrates ConvNeXt with UPerNet for enhanced contrail segmentation in satellite imagery.

Findings

Achieved top 5% performance in contrail segmentation tasks.

Developed a false-color preprocessing technique for satellite images.

Demonstrated high Dice coefficient score for contrail detection.

Abstract

Semantic segmentation is a critical tool in computer vision, applied in various domains like autonomous driving and medical imaging. This study focuses on aircraft contrail detection in global satellite images to improve contrail models and mitigate their impact on climate change.An innovative data preprocessing technique for NOAA GOES-16 satellite images is developed, using brightness temperature data from the infrared channel to create false-color images, enhancing model perception. To tackle class imbalance, the training dataset exclusively includes images with positive contrail labels.The model selection is based on the UPerNet architecture, implemented using the MMsegmentation library, with the integration of two ConvNeXt configurations for improved performance. Cross-entropy loss with positive class weights enhances contrail recognition. Fine-tuning employs the AdamW optimizer with a learning rate of $2.5 \times 10^{-4}$.During inference, a multi-model prediction fusion strategy and a contrail determination threshold of 0.75 yield a binary prediction mask. RLE encoding is used for efficient prediction result organization.The approach achieves exceptional results, boasting a high Dice coefficient score, placing it in the top 5\% of participating teams. This underscores the innovative nature of the segmentation model and its potential for enhanced contrail recognition in satellite imagery.For further exploration, the code and models are available on GitHub: \url{https://github.com/biluko/2023GRIC.git}.