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Life beyond re-entry: new Aeolus data a breath of fresh air
Aeolus data are still improving our understanding of weather and atmospheric science. In Spring 2024, the Aeolus data, science and innovation cluster (DISC) released a new public data update (Baseline 16), with a range of exciting new features.
ERS ATSR fourth Reprocessing datasets available to users
The fourth Reprocessing of the ATSR L1B datasets derived from the ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites have now been released to users by the European Space Agency (ESA).
ERS ATSR L1B Brightness Temperature/Radiance [ER1_AT_1_RBT / ER2_AT_1_RBT]
Band measurements with associated uncertainty estimates. The ERS-1/2 ATSR Level 1B Brightness Temperature/Radiance products (RBT) contain top of atmosphere (TOA) brightness temperature (BT) values for the infra-red channels and radiance values for the visible channels, when available, on a 1-km pixel grid. The visible channels are only available for the ATSR-2 instrument. Values for each channel and for the nadir and oblique views occupy separate NetCDF files within the Sentinel-SAFE format, along with associated uncertainty estimates. Additional files contain cloud flags, land and water masks, and confidence flags for each image pixel, as well as instrument and ancillary meteorological information. The ATSR-1 and ATSR-2 products [ER1_AT_1_RBT and ER2_AT_1_RBT], in NetCDF format stemming from the 4th ATSR reprocessing, are precursors of Envisat AATSR and Sentinel-3 SLSTR data. They have replaced the former L1B products [AT1_TOA_1P and AT2_TOA_1P] in Envisat format from the 3rd reprocessing. Users with Envisat-format products are recommended to move to the new Sentinel-SAFE like/NetCDF format products, and consult the ERS ATSR Product Notice Readme document. The processing updates that have been put in place and the expected scientific improvements for the ERS ATSR 4th reprocessing data have been outlined in full in the User Documentation for (A)ATSR 4th Reprocessing Products
Drones join the campaign to validate Aeolus data
In June and September 2022, the Askos component of the Joint Aeolus Tropical Atlantic Campaign (JATAC), organised by ESA and its international partners, was expanded with new ground-based, drone and radiosonde measurements. The main objective of this campaign was to calibrate and validate Aeolus satellite observations.
Space data help to unravel the complexities of Earth’s atmosphere
As the impacts of the climate crisis intensify, scientists are using ESA’s Earth observation archives to investigate atmospheric processes and their influences on the planet’s changing environment.
Exploring the prevailing achievements and future directions of Aeolus
A tight-knit community of European remote sensing experts converged on the Italian island of Sicily last month to discuss how the strong success of ESA’s Aeolus mission is shaping scientists’ understanding of the winds that sweep across the planet.
Launch of Aeolus VRE
The Aeolus Virtual Research Environment (VRE) is a cloud service, which provides users with a web-based development environment in the form of a JupyterLab workspace.
Dust aerosol campaign validates Aeolus data
Prepared, implemented and executed by a consortium of French universities and research institutions, under the umbrella of the French Space Agency (CNES) and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the Clouds-Atmospheric Dynamics–Dust Interactions in West Africa (CADDIWA) campaign took place on Sal Island in Cape Verde, from 6 to 25 September 2021.
COVID-19: Aeolus and weather forecasts
The drop in commercial flights has led to fewer measurements for weather forecasts, but fortunately, ESA’s Aeolus satellite mission is helping to fill the gap.
GOME Total Column Water Vapour Climate product
The GOME Total Column Water Vapour (TCWV) Climate product was generated by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC), and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) within the ESA GOME-Evolution project. It is a Level 3 type product containing homogenized time-series of the global distribution of TCWV spanning over more than two decades (1995-2015). The data is provided as single netCDF file, containing monthly mean TCWV (units kg/m2) with 1-degree resolution, and is based on measurements from the satellite instruments ERS-2 GOME, Envisat SCIAMACHY, and MetOp-A GOME-2. Details are available in the paper by Beirle et al, 2018. Please also consult the GOME TCWV Product Quality Readme file before using the data.
ERS-2 GOME Spectral Product L1
GOME Level 1 products contain Earthshine radiance at the Top of the Atmosphere and solar irradiance spectra. They were generated by DLR on behalf of the European Space Agency with Level 1 GOME Data Processor (GDP-L1) starting from the Extracted GOME Calibration (EGOC) Level 0 data files. Originally raw detector signals (binary Analog to Digital Converted units) of the science measurements plus calibration constants were provided (dataset version 4 and lower), but following the end of the operational phase of the ERS-2 mission (2 July 2011), as part of ESA's post-operational algorithm improvement activities (Coldewey-Egbers et al., 2018), the GOME Level 1 data type was entirely revised and a dataset of fully calibrated and ready to use data was generated with GOME processor version 5.1. The version 5.1 data bring relevant quality improvements for the revised calibration approach, compensating aging and instrument degradation, and provide enhanced accessibility. The version 5.1 data are in NetCDF format and differ fundamentally from the previous GOME Level 1 data, having the Envisat proprietary format and basically containing Level 1a data where a dedicated extraction software tool had to be applied by end user to obtain spectrally and radiometrically calibrated radiances (including the correction for polarisation, leakage current and stray light). Such calibrations are now applied to the version 5.1 L1b data product in the standard processing. Users of GOME Level 1 products are strongly recommended to migrate to the latest reprocessed dataset. Please consult the GOME Product Quality Readme file before using the data.
ERS-2 GOME Total Column Amount of Trace Gases Product
GOME Level 2 products were generated by DLR on behalf of the European Space Agency, and are the end result of the Level 1 to 2 reprocessing campaign of GOME Level 1 version 4 data with Level 2 GOME Data Processor (GDP) version 5.0 (HDF-5 format). The GOME Level 2 data product comprises the product header, total column densities of ozone and nitrogen dioxide and their associated errors, cloud properties and selected geo-location information, diagnostics from the Level 1 to 2 algorithms and a small amount of statistical information.
Aeolus
The Aeolus mission which was launched into space on 22 August 2018 and was retired on 30 April 2023, provided global observations of wind profiles from space to improve the quality of weather forecasts, and to advance our understanding of atmospheric dynamics and climate processes.
Aeolus VRE
The Aeolus Virtual Research Environment (VRE) is the latest extension to the VirES for Aeolus service, which offers more direct and in-depth data exploitation of the Aeolus mission. The VRE is a cloud service that provides a web-based development environment in the form of a JupyterLab workspace.
3rd ERS Symposium
The ESA Directorate for Observation of the Earth and its Environment held the 3rd ERS Symposium, in 1997, where many of the results from the ERS-1 and ERS-2 missions were presented and discussed by the scientific community.