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.

News - Success Stories

Trailblazing ERS-2 mission enables climate change applications

As ESA’s ERS-2 satellite approaches Earth’s atmosphere for reentry, it’s time to reflect on the mission’s great achievements in powering climate-related applications.

Document - Technical Note

The GOME Thermal Environment

Long Term Monitoring Of The GOME Thermal Environment

Document - General Reference

The Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME)

This document reports on what can be expected from the improved GOME-2 instrument. In order to underpin the case, the achievements of the existing instrument, GOME-1, in terms of instrument performance, routinely generated data products, and scientific results achieved so far are first summarised, before extrapolating to the expected performances and capabilities of the enhanced version GOME-2 being built for METOP.

News - Success Stories

Spotlight on sea-level rise

Scientists to share findings on how satellite has revealed changes in the height of the sea, ice, inland bodies of water and more.

Document - Proceedings

Second-EPS-MetOp-RAO-Workshop.pdf

Proceedings of the 2nd EPS/MetOp RAO Workshop held from 20-22 May 2009 in Barcelona, Spain.

Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)

Sea Ice Thematic Data Product [ALT_TDP_SI]

This is the Sea Ice Thematic Data Product (TDP) V1 resulting from the ESA FDR4ALT project and containing the sea ice related geophysical parameters, along with associated uncertainties: snow depth, radar and sea-ice freeboard, sea ice thickness and concentration. The collection covers data for the ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat missions, and bases on Level 1 data coming from previous reprocessing (ERS REAPER and the Envisat V3.0) but taking into account the improvements made at Level 0/Level 1 in the frame of FDR4ALT (ALT FDR). The Sea Ice TDP provides data from the northern or southern hemisphere in two files corresponding to the Arctic and Antarctic regions respectively for the winter periods only, i.e., October to June for the Arctic, and May to November for the Antarctic. For many aspects, the Sea Ice TDP is very innovative: First time series of sea-ice thickness estimates for ERS Homogeneous calibration, allowing the first Arctic radar freeboard time series from ERS-1 (1991) to CryoSat-2 (2021) Uncertainties estimated along-track with a bottom-up approach based on dominant sources ERS pulse blurring error corrected using literature procedure [Peacock, 2004] The FDR4ALT products are available in NetCDF format. Free standard tools for reading NetCDF data can be used. Information for expert altimetry users is also available in a dedicated NetCDF group within the products. Please consult the FDR4ALT Product User Guide before using the data. The FDR4ALT datasets represent the new reference data for the ERS/Envisat altimetry missions, superseding any previous mission data. Users are strongly encouraged to make use of these datasets for optimal results.

Activity - Quality

SCIRoCCo

The SCIRoCCo project is an interdisciplinary cooperation of scatterometry experts aimed at promoting the continuing exploitation of ESA's unique 20 years' worth of ERS Scatterometer data.

News - Success Stories

Satellites track the health of the ozone layer

ESA’s Earth observation activities are contributing to international efforts to monitor and preserve the layer of stratospheric ozone that blankets the planet.

Document - Product Readme Note

Readme file for GOME Level 2 version 5 products

Readme file for ERS GOME Level 2 version 5 products

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.

News - Data Release news

New ERS-2 GOME Level 1 v5.1 dataset available online

A new GOME Level 1b dataset has been generated for the 16-year mission period bringing relevant quality improvements for the revised calibration approach, compensating aging and instrument degradation, and provide enhanced accessibility.

Document - General Reference

Meteosat-Second-Generation.pdf

This flyer summarises in short the aims, applications and technology of the MSG mission.

Document - General Reference

Meteosat-Second-Generation-The-Satellite-Development.pdf

This publication provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the MSG programme, the mission objectives, the design and development of the MSG spacecraft.

Document - Technical Note

Long-Term-Monitoring-of-GOME-Diffuser-Reflectivity-and-Dark-Signal-Analysis-v2.pdf

This document provides an update on the diffuser degradation analysis of the GOME instrument aboard ERS-2, using the monthly calibration data from June 1995 and August 2001.

Document - Technical Note

Long-term monitoring of the GOME thermal environment - 1995-2002

Document - Technical Note

Long Term Monitoring of GOME Diffuser Reflectivity and Dark Signal Analysis

Long Term Monitoring of GOME Diffuser Reflectivity and Dark Signal Analysis

Event - Conference

Living Planet Symposium 2022

Learn about the 2022 edition of ESA's Living Planet Symposium.

Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)

Land Ice Thematic Data Product [ALT_TDP_LI]

This is the Land Ice Thematic Data Product (TDP) V1 resulting from the ESA FDR4ALT project and containing estimates of ice sheet surface elevation and associated uncertainties. The collection covers data for three different missions: ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat, and based on Level 1 data coming from previous reprocessing (ERS REAPER and the Envisat V3.0) but taking into account the improvements made at Level 0/Level 1 in the frame of FDR4ALT (ALT FDR). The Land Ice TDP focuses specifically on the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, providing these data in different files. For many aspects, the Land Ice Level 2 and Level 2+ processing is very innovative: Improved relocation approach correcting for topographic effects within the beam footprint to identify the Point of Closest Approach Homogeneous timeseries of surface elevation measurements at regular along-track reference nodes. The FDR4ALT products are available in NetCDF format. Free standard tools for reading NetCDF data can be used. Information for expert altimetry users is also available in a dedicated NetCDF group within the products. Please consult the FDR4ALT Product User Guide before using the data. The FDR4ALT datasets represent the new reference data for the ERS/Envisat altimetry missions, superseding any previous mission data. Users are strongly encouraged to make use of these datasets for optimal results.

News - Spotlight on EO community

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.