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- Data (8)
- News (7)
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- Events (1)
- Tools (1)
- Documents (1)
Document - Newsletter
Earth Online Newsletter - 22 March 2024
This issue of the Earth Online Newsletter covers a selection of the latest news and events from ESA.
News - Data Release news
FDR4ALT - ESA unveils new cutting-edge ERS/Envisat Altimeter and Microwave Radiometer Datasets
The European Space Agency (ESA) has developed a comprehensive suite of innovative Earth system data records as part of the Fundamental Data Records for Altimetry project - FDR4ALT.
News - Events and Proceedings
Scientists to showcase value of Earth observation data at EGU
Remote sensing scientists are getting ready to present innovative and exciting applications of satellite data at the European Geosciences Union general assembly which will take place from 24 to 28 April in Vienna, Austria.
News - Data Release news
ICEYE ESA archive collection now available to users
ICEYE ESA archive collection is now available worldwide through ESA’s Third Party Missions programme. The ESA archive collections consist of products requested by ESA-supported projects worldwide, and, therefore, the products are scattered and dispersed over the territory in different time windows. The datasets regularly grow as ESA collects new products over the years.
Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)
ICEYE ESA archive
The ICEYE ESA archive collection consists of ICEYE Level 1 products requested by ESA supported projects over their areas of interest around the world. The dataset regularly grows as ESA collects new products over the years. Three different modes are available: Spot: With a slant resolution of 50 cm in range by 25 cm in azimuth that translated into the ground generates a ground resolution of 1 m over an area of 5 km x 5 km. Due to multi-looking, speckle noise is significantly reduced Strip: The ground swath is 30 x 50 km2 and the ground range resolution is 3 m Scan: A large area (100 km x 100 km is acquired with ground resolution of 15 m). Two different processing levels: Single Look Complex (SLC): Level 1A geo-referenced product and stored in the satellite's native image acquisition geometry (the slant imaging plane) Ground Range Detected (GRD): Level 1B product; detected, multi-looked and projected to ground range using an Earth ellipsoid model; the image coordinates are oriented along the flight direction and along the ground range; no image rotation to a map coordinate system is performed, interpolation artefacts not introduced. The following table defines the offered product types: EO-SIP Product Type Mode Processing level XN_SM__SLC Strip Single Look Complex (SLC) - Level 1A XN_SM__GRD Strip Ground Range Detected (GRD) - Level 1B XN_SL__SLC Spot Single Look Complex (SLC) - Level 1A XN_SL__GRD Spot Ground Range Detected (GRD) - Level 1B XN_SR__GRD Scan Ground Range Detected (GRD) - Level 1B As per ESA policy, very high-resolution data over conflict areas cannot be provided.
News - Events and Proceedings
Very High Resolution data to take centre stage
In the last few years, European New Space providers have helped strengthen the offering of very high resolution remote sensing data products—a designated workshop this November aims to focus on the latest developments in this arena.
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.
News - Success Stories
ICEYE, the World’s First SAR New Space Constellation
ICEYE is a revolutionary Finnish company that developed and launched the world’s first under-100 kilogram synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellites into orbit.
Event - Workshop
Aquaculture User Consultation
The main goal of the workshop was to define a detailed set of user requirements for the future ESA Aquaculture project.
Data - Project Proposal (Restrained)
GHGSat archive and tasking
GHGSat data produce measures of vertical column densities of greenhouse gas emissions ((currently CH4, but eventually CO2), provided on a pre-defined area of 12 km x 12 km, from the full sensor field-of-view. GHGSat Catalogue and New Collect data are available in three different data types: Single Observation: a single observation of a scene. Monthly Monitoring: guaranteed 12 successful observations in a year over a given site (once per month or flexible best effort cadence depending on weather). Weekly Monitoring: guaranteed 52 successful observations in a year over a given site (once a week or flexible best effort cadence based on weather), to accommodate large & persistent monitoring needs. Data are provided as an Emissions package containing the following products: Abundance dataset (Level 2): Set of per-pixel abundances in excess of the local background (ppb) for a single species, and per-pixel measurement error expressed as a standard deviation for a single site on a single satellite pass. Data format is 16-bit GeoTIFF. Concentration Maps (Level 2): High readability pseudocolour map combining surface reflectance, and column density expressed in ppb for a single species in PNG format. The relevant abundance dataset is provided as well. Emission Rates (Level 4): Instantaneous rate for a detected emission from a targeted source estimated using abundance datasets from a single satellite pass and applying dispersion modelling techniques. The delivered product includes the emission rate estimate with uncertainty and key dispersion parameters (in CSV format) as well as the abundance dataset used for the emission estimate. This product is only delivered in the Emissions package if an emission is detected within the abundance dataset. The Level 2 products will be delivered regardless of whether or not an emission is detected. The properties of available products are summarised in the table. Band(s) / Beam Mode(s) and Polarisation SWIR (1635-1675 nm), multiple bands, unpolarised Spatial Resolution <30 m Scene size 12 km x 12 km Species Measured CH4 Geometric Corrections Radial distortion, perspective projection Radiometric Corrections Detector pixel response, ghosting, spectral response, atmospheric correction including trace gas modelling and surface reflectance Details about the data provision, data access conditions and quota assignment procedure are described in the GHGSat Terms of Applicability.
Tools - Other
Food Security TEP
The Food Security Thematic Exploitation Platform (TEP) enables access, processing, uploading, visualisation, manipulation and comparison of data related to food security.
Data - Announcement of Opportunity (Restrained)
Announcement of Opportunity for NoR
ESA invites submissions for the Network of Resources (NoR) call, which aims to support research, development and pre-commercial users to innovate their working practices, moving from a data download paradigm towards a 'bring the user to the data' paradigm.
News - Success Stories
Gravity Field Models from Swarm data
In addition to its geomagnetic objectives, GPS receivers onboard Swarm can and have already been exploited to measure temporal variations in Earth's global gravity field.
Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)
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 - Fast Registration with approval (Restrained)
ERS-1/2 ATSR Averaged Surface Temperature [AT1/AT2_AR__2P]
The Averaged Surface Temperature Product (AST) contains averaged geophysical data at two different resolutions, and with respect to two different averaging schemes: measurement data sets at resolutions of 0.5 by 0.5 degrees and 10 by 10 arcmin with respect to a latitude/longitude grid; other data sets contain data averaged over equal area cells of 50 by 50 km and 17 by 17 km aligned with the satellite ground track. Both top-of-atmosphere and surface data sets are provided. The surface temperature data sets provide, for sea cells, nadir and dual view sea surface temperatures, and for land cells, land surface temperature (currently 11 micron BT) and NDVI. Cloud data is also included. No ADS are included in the AST product; auxiliary data is contained within the MDS. The data sets of the AST product are arranged by surface type and resolution. The 3rd reprocessing of ATSR data was performed in 2013; the processing updates that have been put in place and the scientific improvements are outlined in full in the User Summary Note for the Third ERS ATSR Reprocessing.
Data - Fast Registration with approval (Restrained)
ERS-1/2 ATSR Gridded Brightness Temperature/Reflectance [AT1/AT2_TOA_1P]
The Gridded Brightness Temperature/Reflectance (GBTR) product contains top of atmosphere (TOA) brightness temperature (BT) values for the infra-red channels and reflectance values for the visible channels. Values for each channel and for the nadir and forward views occupy separate measurement data sets. Additional MDS contain cloud and land/sea flags and confidence flags for each image pixel. The 3rd reprocessing of ATSR data was performed in 2013; the processing updates that have been put in place and the scientific improvements are outlined in full in the User Summary Note for the Third ERS ATSR Reprocessing.
Data - Fast Registration with approval (Restrained)
ERS-1/2 ATSR Gridded Surface Temperature [AT1/AT2_NR__2P]
The Gridded Surface Temperature (GST) Product is the Level 2 full resolution geophysical product. The product contains gridded sea-surface temperature images using both nadir and dual view retrieval algorithms. The product includes pixel latitude/longitude positions, X/Y offset and the results of the cloud-clearing/land-flagging. It contains a single measurement data set the content of which is switchable, that is to say, the content of each pixel field will depend on the surface type. Specifically, the contents of the data fields will depend on the setting of the forward and nadir cloud flags and the land flag. The 3rd reprocessing of ATSR data was performed in 2013; the processing updates that have been put in place and the scientific improvements are outlined in full in the User Summary Note for the Third ERS ATSR Reprocessing.
Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)
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.
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.
Mission - Heritage Missions
NOAA POES
NOAA's AVHRR sensor is carried on the POES mission, a constellation of polar orbiting weather satellites.