The Space for Shore project has revealed trends in Arctic glacier retreat and calving intensity, with notable impacts observed in regions like Kongsfjorden, Svalbard. Using over 1,000 radar images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, scientists monitored the evolution of Svalbard’s coastal glaciers between 2015 and 2023. The study highlights a statistically defined mapping of summer …
The 13th Advanced Training Course on Land Remote Sensing (Snow and Glaciers), co-organized by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the University of Innsbruck, took place from September 16-20, 2024, bringing together 50 participants from across Europe and beyond. The course, held in collaboration with partners FFG and ENVEO, provided a unique opportunity for PhD …
The European Space Agency (ESA) is organising an Earth Observation (EO) training course in collaboration with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System, SIOS. The course will take place from 9-14 September 2024 at the Svalbard Science Centre in Svalbard, Norway. The training is designed to promote and …
Background Following on from the 15, 20 and 25 “Years of Progress in Radar Altimetry” Symposia (respectively in 2006, 2012, and 2018), all deemed very successful milestones by the participants and the readership of the Proceedings, we have now reached the 30-year anniversary of precise altimetry. To mark this occasion the European Space Agency, in …
The Greenland Ice Sheet is one of the biggest contributors to global sea level rise and, as the polar climate warms, this contribution is increasing. The decrease in the mass of the ice sheet is split approximately evenly between runoff of meltwater and flow of Greenland’s glaciers into the ocean. ESA’s 4DGreenland project aims to …
An improved version of the SICE algorithm retrieving snow and ice properties is described in a recently published paper. It includes the introduction of a new atmospheric correction, retrieval of snow impurity load and properties, retrievals for partially snow-covered ground and also accounting for various thresholds to be used to assess the retrieval quality. The …
Understanding the processes driving ice-ocean interactions and their timescale is pivotal in getting a full picture of the Antarctic sensitivity to future climate variability. A recently published study measured 2018-2019 increased speed and discharge of ice and calving front retreat for the Cadman Glacier, and highlighted correlation to a positive temperature anomaly in the upper …
In the next decades, population growth is expected to amplify current pressures on critical resources such as fresh water or food, intensify the stress on land and marine ecosystems and increase environmental pollution and its impacts on health and biodiversity. Global warming and the increasing impacts of climate change, especially on most vulnerable populations, will …
New research, utilizing data from ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 and CryoSat satellite missions, offers a stark view of the state of Antarctica’s ice shelves. Over the last 25 years, 40% of these vital floating extensions of the continent’s ice sheet have significantly diminished in volume, releasing approximately 67 trillion tonnes of meltwater into the ocean. This …
Snow cover is an important component of the Earth’s cryosphere and plays a significant role in regulating the Earth’s climate and hydrological cycle. Accurate estimates of snow cover are essential for a range of applications, from climate modelling to water resource management. In a recently published study, researchers develop an adaptive method for estimating snow-covered …
