Floods rank among the most destructive natural disasters, causing significant harm to human health, the environment, cultural heritage, and economies. In Europe alone, floods have led to approximately 4,000 fatalities and $274 billion in economic losses over the past 50 years, with even more severe impacts in developing countries. As climate change accelerates the frequency …
The Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission has been instrumental in our understanding of the water cycle by measuring Total Water Storage Anomalies (TWSA). However, its coarse spatial and temporal resolutions have limited its applications in various scientific and socio-economic domains. A recent scientific paper, an outcome of the 4DMED-Hydrology project, demonstrates a new …
This activity is focused on the exploitation of Earth Observation data, in situ data and flood models with the aim of enhancing the use of EO data for flood prediction. It is motivated by the need to maximise the use of the above-mentioned data and tools for the UN Sustainable Development Goals number 6, Water, …
The component of the Earth System addressed in this project is snow cover in mountain regions. The main scientific and technical objectives of AI4Snow are the development and training of AI methods to greatly improve remote sensing-based snow cover products for mountain regions as well as the implementation of data cubes containing all necessary datasets …
The project aims to develop, train, and apply a hybrid neural network model to optimise EO data for a coherent, balanced water cycle at the global scale resulting in a new pixel-resolution datasets for the four water cycle components: precipitation, evapotranspiration, change in water storage, and runoff (or river discharge). These data will cover the …
The pressure on water resources is steadily increasing due to population growth and increasing wealth for part of the population. Climate change adds to this pressure, e.g. through more frequent and intense heat waves and droughts, and also disturbs the water cycle through more frequent floods. In order to tackle such challenges we need to …
The project brings together the EO water cycle community developing novel high-resolution EO data products, and the land surface and hydrological modelling community engaged in advancing hyper-resolution modelling of the hydrological cycle at regional and continental scales to assess the uncertainty of existing EO and LSM/HM data sets related to key terrestrial ECVs and generate …
Irrigation has a wide impact on our planet, with over 70% of freshwater globally used for crop cultivation. While essential for food production, irrigation has impact at local level: it can deplete water reserves, leading to local subsidence, saltwater intrusion, and potential biodiversity alterations. Recently, an international team of scientists, supported by ESA’s Science for …
A recent paper published in Earth System Science Data presents a breakthrough in irrigation data sets obtained from satellite observations. The study, conducted as part of the EO Science for Society Irrigation+ project, focuses on three major river basins with varying irrigation extents and methodologies, namely the Ebro river basin in northeastern Spain, the Po …
The AlpLakes project aims at providing operational products based on a combination of remote sensing and hydrodynamic models. ALPLAKES is a continuation of the CORESIM (ESA SEOM S2-4Sci Land and Water) project based on the recommendations provided during the CORESIM roadmap. While many studies have focused on ecosystem variability over a latitudinal gradient (Woolway and …
