Clouds play an important role in the energy budget of our planet: optically thick clouds reflect the incoming solar radiation, leading to cooling the Earth, while thinner clouds act as “greenhouse films”, preventing escape of the Earth’s long-wave radiation to space. Cloud response to ongoing greenhouse gases climate warming is the largest source of uncertainty …
Stratospheric ozone (the “ozone layer”) protects the biosphere from harmful UltraViolet (UV) radiation. Ozone (O3) is expected to recover as a consequence of the Montreal Protocol signed in 1987 and its Amendments regulating the phase-out of ozone-depleting substances (ODS). The stratospheric halogen amount (mainly bromine and chlorine) released by ODSs reached its maximum abundance in …
Observing and understanding aerosol properties is fundamental for the remote sensing community, yet things get more complicated in cloudy environments. Pixels located in the transition zone between pure cloud and pure aerosol are often discarded by both aerosol and cloud algorithms, despite being essential for studying aerosol–cloud interactions, which still represent the largest source of …
A high level of innovation in algorithm development and methodological approach is the key feature of the activities performed during the ESA S5P+Innovation AOD/BRDF project. Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) is the single most comprehensive variable for the remote assessment of the aerosol load in the atmosphere. Atmospheric aerosols, such as aerosols from the burning of …
Pollutant and greenhouse gas emission inventories provide essential information for policy makers, governments and subsidiary bodies to evaluate progress towards emission abatement measures, and decide on future strategies. Inventories use different methodologies between countries, and have large uncertainties related to both activity data and emission factors. The use of satellite data, notably the imagery of …
The detection and repair of methane leaks from fossil fuel production activities have been identified as a key climate change mitigation strategy. In the last years, a number of optical satellite missions with a spatial resolution of 30-m or better have shown potential for the detection of strong methane plumes emitted by point sources, which …
Tim is currently a research fellow working within the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) based at the University of Leicester. In addition to his research role, he also co-chairs the international GEWEX Water Vapour Assessment (G-VAP) working group. Output from this group features in the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate …
Reflectance of the Earth surface is one of the natural major components affecting climate. Surface interaction with incoming solar radiation and the atmosphere has a substantial impact on the Earth’s energy budget. Moreover, the accurate description of the surface reflection is crucial for different atmospheric studies including aerosol and trace gases characterization. One of …
Operational retrievals of trace gas column amounts assume (near) cloud free conditions. However, the large pixel size of the satellite instruments (for example the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument on Sentinel 5P, TROPOMI-S5P, is 5.5 km by 3.5 km at nadir) imply that pixels may be contaminated by sub-pixel sized cloud(s). Furthermore, clouds in neighbour pixels may …
In the context of the EO Science for Society Programme Element, the European Space Agency is organising ATMOS-2021, a conference on the topical theme Atmosphere aimed at exploiting data from ESA and EO Missions for science and application development. The event is co-organised with CNR. The conference objectives are to: Provide a platform for scientific …
