South America is a rapidly developing continent of planetary importance. It hosts the Amazon forest, which is the single largest source of biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions into the global atmosphere; it is also a region where extremely violent and extensive wildfires are known to cause widespread damages and fatalities. In addition, the degradation …
The uninhabited coral reef island of Fatu Huku in the southeastern Marquesas Islands is explored in a brand new chapter of the Seafloor Geomorphology as Benthic Habitat (Second Edition) book, published by Elsevier. The discussion of the relationships between its benthic habitats and morphometry (bathymetry, slope, hotspots, and ecotones) is based on data collected and …
The carbon cycle is central to the Earth system, being inextricably coupled with climate, the water cycle, nutrient cycles and the production of biomass by photosynthesis on land and in the oceans. In the natural system the balance among carbon in the atmosphere, land and ocean is regulated through fluxes between these three main reservoirs. …
Potential novel scientific developments and applications may emerge from ESA’s Earth Explorer mission Aeolus. The mission was launched in August 2018 and will provide over 3 years of data to the user community. Aeolus provides global observations of wind profiles from space, along with information on aerosols and clouds. Further it will advance our understanding …
ESA and the European Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Innovation (DG-RTD) have signed an agreement to join forces to provide a coordinated response to the grand science challenges of the next decade. With this agreement ESA and DG-RTD aim at establishing an effective alignment of selected scientific activities under Horizon Europe and FutureEO programmes …
Read recent news from the Campaign Earth ESA blog.
A new dataset of vertical column densities of H2O and HDO retrieved from short-wave infrared reflectance measurements by the TROPOMI instrument onboard the Sentinel-5p satellite was recently released. The data quality shows improvements in noise level compared to previous missions like SCIAMACHY. The retrieval methodology, the validation approach and demonstrative applications of the dataset are …
The Quasi-Analytical Algorithm was developed to derive inherent optical properties by analytically inverting the spectral remote-sensing reflectance. It is the algorithm used in the ESA Ocean-colour CCI project to retrieve particulate optical backscattering (bbp). Due to the high uncertainties still associated to QAA global retrievals of bbp, reliable accuracy estimates of the QAA are essential …
Accurate measurements of the sea ice area and thickness with the aid of ranging data provided by missions such as CryoSat-2 are crucial for the understanding of the transformations occurring in the Arctic, in light of observed changes in seasonality, increase of winter air temperatures and delays in freeze-up. An important factor in the calculation …
Currently we speak of the ‘golden age’ of Earth Observation (EO). Not only can we access a variety of data from heritage and current EO missions serving scientific and operational needs, new systems for monitoring our blue planet are constantly being planned, built, and sent into the Earth orbit. Regarding atmospheric science, a major step …
