The European Space Agency (ESA) organises a series of summer schools on Monitoring of the Earth System, which promote the exploitation of Earth observation (EO) data across disciplines, with a specific focus on their assimilation into Earth System models.

The two-week course, held in ESA-ESRIN (near Rome, Italy) during August (typically every two years), aims to provide students with an integrated end-to-end perspective going from measurement techniques to end-user applications. Courses include lectures covering issues related to Remote Sensing, Earth System Modelling and Data Assimilation as well as hands-on computing exercises on the processing of EO data. Keynote lectures on global change issues are also given to discuss the current state of the science of global change and its relationship to society in order to help students appreciate how their specific field fits into a broader scientific and political context. For more information, please see the programme.

The event is open to Early Career Scientists (i.e. Ph.D. students, young post-doctoral scientists) who are specialised in a variety of Earth Science disciplines and wish to expand and improve their knowledge and skills.

The sixth EO Summer School took place between 30 July – 11 August 2012.

Programme

Jean-Nöel Thépaut (ECMWF)

• Satellite Data for Numerical Weather Prediction: I
• Satellite Data for Numerical Weather Prediction: II
• New applications of Satellite Data Assimilation: Reanalyses, Atmospheric Composition, climate monitoring and much more...

Martin Visbeck (GEOMAR)

• Global Ocean In-Situ Observing Systems
• Atlantic Ocean Overturning Circulation
• The Future Ocean: To warm, to high turning sour

Johanna Tamminen (Finnish Meteorological Institute)

• Inverse problems and uncertainty quantification in remote sensing
• Markov chain Monte Carlo technique with applications in remote sensing of atmospheric composition
• Priors, posteriors and model uncertainty

Peter Minnett (University of Miami)

• Satellite Oceanography: Sea-Surface Temperature and Climate Data Records
• Satellite Oceanography: Ocean color
• Applications of microwave radiometry in ocean and atmospheric science

Claudia Kuenzer (DLR)

• Physical Principles of Remote Sensing
• Image Classification
• Thermal Remote Sensing

Iarla Kilbane-Dawe (Ind. Science & Policy Researcher)

• Deciding whats over the horizon - creating new innovation
• Making ideas work - developing innovations that people want
• Creating demand for innovations - marketing and communications strategies

Andreas Kääb (University of Oslo)

• Remote sensing of glaciers and ice caps 1: area and mass changes
• Remote sensing of glaciers and ice caps 2: dynamics
• Remote sensing of glaciers and ice caps 3: natural hazards

Alan O'Neil (NCEO)

• The theory of data assimilation: basic concepts
• Data assimilation: practical algorithms
• Exploiting Earth Observations with data assimilation

Reiner Rummel (Technische Universität München)

• ESA explorer mission GOCE: earth gravity from space
• Signal processing on a sphere
• Gravity and Earth Sciences

Ernesto Lopez-Baeza (Universitat de Valencia)

• Physical Principles of Passive Microwave Radiometry. Soil Moisture
• Soil Moisture Estimation from Space and its Validation
• Remote Sensing Applications for Land/Atmosphere: Earth Radiation Balance

Michel Verstraete (JRC)

• Introduction to radiation anisotropy
• Observing Earth from different directions with MISR
• Exploiting the spectral and directional signatures of land surfaces

Roberto Sabia (ESA)

• Satellite Oceanography: Ocean Salinity

Stefano Nativi (CNR)

• Cyberinfrastructures in Earth Sciences

Computing Practicals

DA (Data Assimilation) Practicals

• Effect of statistical analysis parameters
• 4D-Var and incremental 4D-Var
• Ensemble and extended Kalman filters
• Projects
• Student's Projects

RS (Remote Sensing) Practicals

• Measuring productivity in the Benguela upwelling system
• Sea Surface Temperature and the Indian Ocean Dipole
• Monitoring oil pollution using SAR and optical data
• Exploring the Sensitivity of Passive Microwave Signatures to Different Surface and Observation Conditions
• Rice mapping in the Phillipnes
• Anisotropy