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 eighth EO Summer School took place between 1 – 12 August, 2016.

Programme

Nektarios Chrysoulakis (FORTH)

• Urban Remote sensing applications
• The exploitation of EO in urban energy budget estimation (focusing on UrbanFluxes)
• EO-derived surface albedo time series

Maria Brovelli (Politecnico di Milano)

• Overview of Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformation (FOSS4G)
• Citizen Generated Content and FOS Participative Platforms: VGI
• Citizen Generated Content and FOS Participative Platforms: geocrowdsourced data

Heather Leson (Qatar Computing Research Institute)

• Building a Citizen Engaged Research Project
• Crowdsourcing with Geospatial Data-Driven Innovation
• The Next Million Mappers and MicroTasking

Angela Benedetti (ECMWF)

• Atmospheric Composition Modelling and Assimilation
• Data assimilation principles
• Brief tutorial on tangent linear and adjoint models
• Use of satellite data for Environmental Monitoring

Eberhard Parlow (University of Basel)

• Surface temperature – what does this data tell us about micro-meteorological processes?
• Urban climate – analysis of radiation and heat fluxes
• Long data series – climate related data for global change trend analysis

Bertrand Chapron (Ifremer)

• Ocean from Space
• The restless ocean
• Surf the wave

Tim Wright (Leeds University)

• Measuring surface deformation with InSAR
• Using EO to understand tectonic processes
• Using EO to understand volcanic processes

Lorenzo Bruzonne (University of Trento)

• Change detection
  • Change detection in multispectral images
  • Change detection in SAR images
  • Challenges in change detection

Amos Lawless (University of Reading)

• Data assimilation: Introduction and basic principles.
• Practical algorithms for data assimilation
• Applications of data assimilation and current challenges

Antonello Provenzale (CNR)

• Earth System Modelling 1: Global and regional climate models, climate downscaling
• Earth System Modelling 2: Ecosystem Modelling
• Earth System Modelling 3: Coupled Geosphere-Biosphere Modelling

Jean-Philippe Gastellu-Etchegorry (CESBIO)

• Earth System Monitoring & Modelling
  • Physics of Remote Sensing
  • Hyperspectral
  • Advanced Remote Sensing

Michel Van Roozendael (BIRA-IASB)

• Remote sensing of the atmospheric composition
• Ozone variability and long-term changes
• Global air quality monitoring from space

Phil Browne (University Of Reading), Adam El-Said (University Of Reading), Nicola Pounder (Assimila), Jose Gomez (University College London)

• Data assimilation practicals

Chris Stewart (RSAC c/o ESA), Michael Foumelis (RSAC c/o ESA), Andrea Minchella (Satellite Applications Catapult), Zina Mitraka (FORTH), Valborg Byfield (University of Southampton), Eleni Tzortzi (University of Exeter)

• Remote sensing practicals (SNAP toolbox)
• Earth Observation practicals (LearnEO!)