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News - Thematic area articles
Monitoring water on Earth's surface
ESA's Earth observation satellites are playing a leading role in furthering our understanding of how Earth's terrestrial hydrosphere is being influenced by humankind.
Document - Newsletter
Earth Online Newsletter - 16 December 2022
This issue of the Earth Online Newsletter covers a selection of the latest news and events from ESA.
News - Thematic area articles
How satellite data help to shape society
Data from ESA’s Earth observation archives are improving understanding of the interactions between human activities and the environment, helping to power green economic development and boosting prosperity in Europe and beyond.
Event - Training
EO Summer School 6
ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation data.
Event - Training
EO Summer School 5
ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation data.
Event - Training
EO Summer School 4
ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation data.
Event - Training
EO Summer School 3
ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation data.
News - Thematic area articles
Transforming space data into climate action
ESA’s Earth observation activities are playing a key role in the revitalised global drive to combat climate change.
Activity - General activities
International Charter Space and Major Disasters
Learn about the International Charter Space and Major Disasters, which ESA participate in disaster monitoring.
News - Events and Proceedings
Data preservation takes centre stage at Living Planet Symposium
Against the backdrop of the famed Rhine River, world-class scientists and Earth observation data-users are gathered this week in the historical city of Bonn, at the Living Planet Symposium (LPS).
News - General News
Introducing Mirko Albani
In this short introduction, ESA's Heritage Missions Programme Manager describes what he likes most about ESA's long term archive of satellite mission data and his role in the programme.
News - Data Release news
New Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data now available
Within ESA’s Landsat offering, access to the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data is now available.
Data - Data Description
Landsat 8 Collection 2 European Coverage
This dataset contains the European Coverage of Landsat-8 Collection 2 data, both Level 1 and Level 2, since the beginning of the mission. Landsat-8 Collection 2 is the result of reprocessing effort on the archive and on fresh products with significant improvement with respect to Collection 1 on data quality, obtained by means of advancements in data processing and algorithm development. The primary characteristic is a relevant improvement in the absolute geolocation accuracy (now re-baselined to the European Space Agency Copernicus Sentinel-2 Global Reference Image, GRI) but includes also updated digital elevation modelling sources, improved Radiometric Calibration (even correction for the TIRS striping effect), enhanced Quality Assessment Bands, updated and consistent metadata files and usage of Cloud Optimized Georeferenced (COG) Tagged Image File Format. Landsat-8 level 1 products combine data from the 2 Landsat instruments, OLI and TIRS. The level 1 products generated can be either L1TP or L1GT: L1TP - Level 1 Precision Terrain (Corrected) (L1T) products: Radiometrically calibrated and orthorectified using ground control points (GCPs) and digital elevation model (DEM) data to correct for relief displacement. The highest quality Level-1 products suitable for pixel-level time series analysis. GCPs used for L1TP correction are derived from the Global Land Survey 2000 (GLS2000) data set. L1GT - Level 1 Systematic Terrain (Corrected) (L1GT) products: L1GT data products consist of L0 product data with systematic radiometric, geometric and terrain corrections applied and resampled for registration to a cartographic projection, referenced to the WGS84, G873, or current version. The dissemination server contains three different classes of Level1 products Real Time (RT): Newly acquired Landsat-8 OLI/TIRS data are processed upon downlink but use an initial TIRS line-of-sight model parameters; the data is made available in less than 12 hours (4-6 hours typically). Once the data have been reprocessed with the refined TIRS parameters, the products are transitioned to either Tier 1 or Tier 2 and removed from the Real-Time tier (in 14-16 days). Tier 1 (T1): Landsat scenes with the highest available data quality are placed into Tier 1 and are considered suitable for time-series analysis. Tier 1 includes Level-1 Precision and Terrain (L1TP) corrected data that have well-characterized radiometry and are inter-calibrated across the different Landsat instruments. The georegistration of Tier 1 scenes is consistent and within prescribed image-to-image tolerances of ≦ 12-meter radial root mean square error (RMSE). Tier 2 (T2): Landsat scenes not meeting Tier 1 criteria during processing are assigned to Tier 2. Tier 2 scenes adhere to the same radiometric standard as Tier 1 scenes, but do not meet the Tier 1 geometry specification due to less accurate orbital information (specific to older Landsat sensors), significant cloud cover, insufficient ground control, or other factors. This includes Systematic Terrain (L1GT) and Systematic (L1GS) processed data. Landsat-8 level 2 products are generated from L1GT and L1TP Level 1 products that meet the <76 degrees Solar Zenith Angle constraint and include the required auxiliary data inputs to generate a scientifically viable product. The data are available a couple of days after the Level1 T1/T2. The level 2 products generated can be L2SP or L2SR: L2SP - Level 2 Science Products (L2SP) products: include Surface Reflectance (SR), Surface Temperature (ST), ST intermediate bands, an angle coefficients file, and Quality Assessment (QA) Bands. L2SR - Level 2 Surface Reflectance (L2SR) products: include Surface Reflectance (SR), an angle coefficients file, and Quality Assessment (QA) Bands; it is generated if ST could not be generated Two different categories of Level 1 products are offered: LC with Optical, Thermal and Quality Map images, LO with Optical and Quality Map images (Thermal not available). For the Level 2 data, only LC combined products are generated
Event - Workshop
Fringe 2003 Workshop
The third ESA International Workshop on ERS SAR Interferometry and its first Workshop on ASAR interferometry: Advances in SAR interferometry from ERS and Envisat missions.
News - Data Release news
New Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data available from January
From the beginning of 2022, ESA will start the distribution of the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 products.
Activity - Projects
Dragon Cooperation Programme
The Dragon Programme focussed on science and applications development in China using mainly data from the ERS and Envisat missions. The Prgramme was a cooperation between ESA and the National Remote Sensing Centre of China.
Activity - Projects
Dragon 2 Cooperation Programme
The Dragon 2 Programme focussed on the exploitation of ESA, ESA's Third Party Missions and Chinese Earth observation data for science and applications development in land, ocean and atmospheric applications.
Event - Workshop
Space and the Arctic 2009 Workshop
Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at an unprecedented rate. This workshop looked at the needs and challenges of working and living in the rapidly changing Arctic and explore how space-based services might help to meet those needs.
News - Infographics
An overview of ESA's Third Party Missions programme
ESA’s Third Party Missions programme consists of almost 50 satellite missions, which are owned by organisations around the world. ESA has agreements with these organisations to acquire, process, and distribute data from their missions
News - Data Release news
New reprocessing of datasets celebrates 30 years of ERS
The ERS programme celebrated its 30th anniversary on 17 July. Today, we are still exploiting ERS data and experts continue to work on improving the altimeter, radiometer and SAR data the programme acquired.