ERS Tandem Mission - Examples of Zurich and Surroundings

Weather Conditions

The ERS Tandem Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) scenes provided for this note were acquired at Fucino Station, Italy on 4th and 5th November 1995, at 22.33 local time, from ERS-1 and ERS-2 respectively. The weather situation at the time of acquisition was as follows. An extreme cold airmass invaded the area the night before the first acquisition and brought snow to all elevations, even down to 400m msl. On the Saentis (2490m), 37cm of snow were measured, and in Zurich (556m) it was still 1cm. On the 4th evening the weather was partly cloudy with some snow showers in the eastern and southern part of the area during the night. During the day of the 5th temperature rose above zero only in the lowlands (below 600 m msl) allowing the snow to melt (Zurich, Luzern and Altdorf) and the weather was partly clear. At the time of data-take, at 22.33 temperatures were below zero everywhere and on both days.

Keywords: ESA European Space Agency - Agence spatiale europeenne, observation de la terre, earth observation, satellite remote sensing, teledetection, geophysique, altimetrie, radar, chimique atmospherique, geophysics, altimetry, radar, atmospheric chemistry