ESA’s World Fire Atlas, an essential tool in wildfire monitoring, keeps detecting and mapping active fires globally since 2019 thanks to the SLSTR sensor aboard Sentinel-3. The tool already counted 258 fires in Canada in 2024 up to 13 May. At the same time, the extent of air pollution caused by these wildfires are highlighted …
Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas contributing significantly to climate change. Due to its relatively short lifetime mitigation efforts on CH4 emissions could rapidly and efficiently pay-off to limit climate change. Targetted mitigation efforts should rely on a solid understanding of sources and sink of CH4 at all scales, from the global scale to …
Project overview AIRSENSE’s main objective is to enhance the understanding of aerosol and aerosol-cloud interactions. This activity is part of Atmosphere Science Cluster of ESA’s EO Science for Society programme, an element of the ESA FutureEO programme, which aims at boosting Europe’s excellence in EO science and its applications. One of the goals of this …
The aim of the OPEn platform for the Retrieval of Aerosol and CO2 from S5 (OPERA-S5) project is to develop a totally modular open scientific platform for the combined retrieval of CO2, CH4, aerosol and surface properties based on GRASP (Generalized Retrieval of Atmosphere and Surface Properties) code with the measurements of Sentinel-5 spectrometer UVNS …
Methane (CH4) is a significant anthropogenic greenhouse gas, second only to carbon dioxide (CO2) in contributing to global warming. It constitutes approximately 25% of the warming effect since pre-industrial times. Traditional methods for monitoring methane emissions rely on bottom-up approaches, calculating emissions by multiplying activity levels with emission factors. Satellites offer a more efficient alternative, …
Landscape fires, whether natural or human-induced, have a key impact on the Earth system via the release of pollutants, greenhouse gases and aerosols, affecting human health and climate. Over the next decades their role may increase related to drier and warmer conditions, exacerbating biome shifts and lowering biodiversity. In addition, this may provide one of …
A team of researchers estimated the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from coal-fired power plants and other major anthropogenic point sources in the South African Highveld region using space-based data. The results indicate that CO2 emissions can be obtained also in challenging cases where the plumes from multiple sources overlap. The new publication characterizes CO2 emissions …
3DCTRL project aims to evaluate cloud correction methodologies in Copernicus Sentinel-4, Sentinel-5 and Sentinel-5p trace gas retrieval schemes and to explore ways to improve handling of realistic clouds in the retrievals of atmospheric species. Cloud shadow fraction, cloud top height, cloud optical depth, solar zenith and viewing angles, were identified as the metrics being the …
Atmospheric aerosol is one of the main drivers of climate changes. Importance of accurate global aerosol characterization for climate studies and air pollution monitoring is a well recognized problem (e.g., see IPCC AR5 by Boucher et al.2013). In addition to the traditional spectral Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) such characterization should also include such extended aerosol …
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 …
