Thorsten completed his Physics studies at Julius Maximilians University Würzburg, Germany in 2011, with a focus on geophysics and a thesis on “Upgrade and testing of an experimental setup to study explosive magma-water interactions”. During the period 2012-2016 he was a research associate and doctoral candidate at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, working on multi-temporal remote sensing of …
The ESA Polar Science Cluster involves a set of different ESA-funded scientific activities addressing different aspects of Polar research. Through this set of projects ESA aims at working hand by hand with the scientific community to: Improve our observation capacity over Polar regions and contribute to develop the next generation of Polar observations from …
In this course we will introduce you to the role of satellite Earth observation (EO) technology and the data it produces in monitoring the Earth’s Cryosphere. The Cryosphere is the portion of the Earth’s surface where water exists in solid form as glaciers, sea ice, ice caps, and areas of snow. The first week will …
Made up of layers of compressed snow from over the last 100,000 years, the vast Greenland ice sheet acts as both a valuable record of our past climate and a bellwether for future climate change. This online course highlights how the Greenland ice sheet is monitored from space and the ground. You’ll look at the …
Estimating sea ice thickness is essential to monitor the effects of long-term climatic change and understand their consequences for Arctic ecosystems. The continued sea ice loss – widely observed through EO data since 1979 – is bringing to an increased Arctic maritime activity for which timely forecasts of ice conditions are required too, to ensure …
Ice velocity is an essential parameter to study ice sheet and glacier dynamics. It is needed to estimate the mass flux and discharge of ice from the accumulation zone to the ocean and hence influences estimates of ice sheet mass balance and sea level rise. Furthermore, ice velocity measurements constitute valuable input for constraining and …
The Cryosphere Virtual Lab is a system that uses recent information and communication technologies to facilitate the exploitation analysis, sharing, mining and visualization of the massive amounts of earth observation data available on the cryosphere. The system utilises available satellite, in-situ and model data from ESA/EU, Svalbard Observatory (SIOS) and other sources. CVL fosters collaboration between …
Kicking-off next 1 July, a 15m€ project funded by the European Union is about to promote the integration of international environmental observing systems for the Arctic and improve the tailoring of these systems to the needs of various user groups – including local inhabitants, academia, industry and decision makers – for the 2021-2025 period. Read …
The ALBATROSS Project (ALtimetry for BAthymetry and Tide Retrievals for the Southern Ocean, Sea ice and ice Shelves) , led by NOVELTIS in collaboration with DTU, NPI and UCL, is one of the activities funded by ESA in the frame of the Polar Science Cluster, with the objective to foster collaborative research and interdisciplinary networking …
Sea ice in key Arctic coastal regions is thinning at a rate of 70–100% faster than previously thought. These values, reported in a paper recently published in The Cryosphere, are derived when the sea ice thickness in the period 2002–2018 is calculated using new snow data with more realistic variability and trends. Results are outcomes …
