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Document - Newsletter
Earth Online Newsletter - 12 May 2023
This issue of the Earth Online Newsletter covers a selection of the latest news and events from ESA.
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 3
ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation data.
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
Interviewing Mirko Albani
ESA’s Heritage Space Programme Manager describes the goals of the programme, some of the challenges involved in preserving and improving 40 years of historical Earth observation data, and his passion for curating this long-term archive.
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 - Success Stories
How Envisat helped to shape global understanding of Earth’s systems
Twenty years have passed since a ground-breaking European spacecraft designed to deliver unprecedented insight into the planet’s changing environment was lofted into orbit.
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
Envisat Validation Workshop 2002
The workshop covered various aspects of validation of the Envisat instruments.
Tools - Apps
Heritage Missions app for iOS
Download the Heritage Missions application to discover what the missions were about, how it worked and what the elements of the space and ground segment that make these missions unique.
Tools - Apps
Heritage Missions app for Android
Download the Heritage Missions application to discover what the missions were about, how it worked and what the elements of the space and ground segment that make these missions unique.
News - Infographics
Envisat - ESA's versatile Earth observation satellite
Learn more about ESA's Envisat mission - the largest Earth observation satellite ever built - in a new infographic.
Data - Announcement of Opportunity
Announcement of Opportunity for G-POD
ESA is offering all scientists the possibility to perform bulk processing and/or validation of their own algorithms exploiting the large ESA Earth-observation archive.
Data - Data Description
Envisat MERIS Full Resolution - Level 1 [MER_FRS_1P/ME_1_FRG]
The MERIS Level 1 Full Resolution (FR) product contains the Top of Atmosphere (TOA) upwelling spectral radiance measurements. The in-band reference irradiances for the 15 MERIS bands are computed by averaging the in-band solar irradiance of each pixel. The in-band solar irradiance of each pixel is computed by integrating the reference solar spectrum with the band-pass of each pixel. The MERIS FR Level 1 product has Sentinel 3-like format starting from the 4th reprocessing data released to users in July 2020. Each measurement and annotation data file is in NetCDF 4. The Level 1 product is composed of 22 data files: 15 files containing radiances at each band (one band per file), accompanied by the associated error estimates, and 7 annotation data files. The 15 sun spectral flux values provided in the instrument data file of the Level 1 products are the in-band reference irradiances adjusted for the Earth-sun distance at the time of measurement. The band-pass of each pixel is derived from on-ground and in-flight characterisation via an instrument model. The values "Band wavelength" and "Bandwidth" provided in the Manifest file of the Level 1b products are the averaged band-pass of each pixel over the instrument field of view. Auxiliary data are also listed in the Manifest file associated to each product. The Level 1 FR product covers the complete instrument swath. The product duration is not fixed and it can span up to the time interval of the input Level 0 (for a maximum of 20 minutes). Thus the estimated size of the Level 1 FR is dependent on the start/stop time of the acquired segment. During the Envisat mission, acquisition of MERIS Full Resolution data was subject to dedicated planning based on on-demand ordering and coverage of specific areas according to operational recommendations and considerations. See yearly and global density maps to get a better overview of the MERIS FR coverage.
Data - Data Description
Envisat MERIS Full Resolution - Level 2 [MER_FRS_2P/ME_2_FRG]
MERIS FR Level 2 is a Full-Resolution Geophysical product for Ocean, Land and Atmosphere. Each MERIS Level 2 geophysical product is derived from a MERIS Level 1 product and auxiliary parameter files specific to the MERIS Level 2 processing. The MERIS FR Level 2 product has Sentinel 3-like format starting from the 4th reprocessing data released to users in July 2020. The data package is composed of NetCDF 4 files containing instrumental and scientific measurements, and a Manifest file which contains metadata information related to the description of the product. A Level 2 product is composed of 64 measurement files containing: 13 files containing Water-leaving reflectance, 13 files containing Land surface reflectance and 13 files containing the TOA reflectance (for all bands except those dedicated to measurement of atmospheric gas - M11 and M15), and several files containing additional measurements on Ocean, Land and Atmospheric parameters and annotation. The Auxiliary data used are listed in the Manifest file associated to each product. The Level 2 FR product covers the complete instrument swath. The product duration is not fixed and it can span up to the time interval of the input Level 0/Level 1. Thus the estimated size of the Level 2 FR is dependent on the start/stop time of the acquired segment. During the Envisat mission, acquisition of MERIS Full Resolution data was subject to dedicated planning based on on-demand ordering and coverage of specific areas according to operational recommendations and considerations. See yearly and global density maps to get a better overview of the MERIS FR coverage.
Data - Data Description
Envisat MERIS Reduced Resolution - Level 1 [MER_RR__1P/ME_1_RRG]
The MERIS Level 1 Reduced Resolution (RR) product contains the Top of Atmosphere (TOA) upwelling spectral radiance measurements at reduced resolution. The in-band reference irradiances for the 15 MERIS bands are computed by averaging the in-band solar irradiance of each pixel. The in-band solar irradiance of each pixel is computed by integrating the reference solar spectrum with the band-pass of each pixel. The MERIS RR Level 1 product has Sentinel 3-like format starting from the 4th reprocessing data released to users in July 2020. Each measurement and annotation data file is in NetCDF 4. The Level 1 product is composed of 22 measurements data files, 15 files containing radiances at each band (one band per file), accompanied by the associated error estimates, and 7 annotation data files. The band-pass of each pixel is derived from on-ground and in-flight characterisation via an instrument model. The values "Band wavelength" and "Bandwidth" provided in the Manifest file of the Level 1 products are the averaged band-pass of each pixel over the instrument field of view. The Auxiliary data used are listed in the Manifest file associated to each product. MERIS was operating continuously on the day side of the Envisat orbit (descending track). RR data was acquired over 43.5 minutes in each orbit, i.e. 80% of the descending track.
Data - Data Description
Envisat MERIS Reduced Resolution - Level 2 [MER_RR__2P/ME_2_RRG]
MERIS RR Level 2 is a Reduced Resolution (RR) Geophysical product for Ocean, Land and Atmosphere. Each MERIS Level 2 geophysical product is derived from a MERIS Level 1 product and auxiliary parameter files specific to the MERIS Level 2 processing. The MERIS RR Level 2 product has a Sentinel 3-like format starting from the 4th reprocessing data released to users in July 2020. The data package is composed of NetCDF 4 files containing instrumental and scientific measurements, and a Manifest file, which contains metadata information related to the description of the product. A Level 2 product is composed of 64 measurement files containing mainly: 13 files containing Water-leaving reflectance, 13 files containing Land surface reflectance and 13 files containing the TOA reflectance (for all bands except those dedicated to measurement of atmospheric gas - M11 and M15), and several files containing additional measurement on Ocean, Land and Atmospheric parameters. The Auxiliary data used are listed in the Manifest file associated to each product. MERIS was operating continuously on the day side of the Envisat orbit (descending track). RR data was acquired over 43.5 minutes in each orbit, i.e. 80% of the descending track.
Mission - Heritage Missions
Envisat
Envisat was ESA's successor to ERS. Envisat carried ten instruments aboard for a wide range of Earth observing fields. The mission was operational from 2002 to 2012.
Activity - Quality
SEOM CAWA
The Advanced Clouds, Aerosols and WAter vapour products for Sentinel-3/OLCI project aims to develop and improve the advanced atmospheric retrieval algorithms developed for MERIS and OLCI instruments.
Document - General Reference
2013 Dragon 3 Brochure
The 2013 Dragon 3 cooperation brochure presents the activities undertaken since the formal start of programme in June 2012.