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- Data (6)
- News (5)
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- Events (3)
- Tools (2)
- Activities (2)
- Campaigns (6)
- Documents (372)
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.
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 - 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.
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 - Success Stories
ERS Heritage Data allow for 30 years of science
At their time of launch thirty years ago, the two ERS satellites were the most sophisticated Earth observation spacecraft ever developed and launched by Europe.
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.
Document - Product Specifications
wind-scatterometer-processing-requirements-from-sigma-nought-triplets-to-dealiased-wind.pdf
This document defines the ground processing algorithms for the ERS-1 AMI wind mode (Scatterometer) from the sigma nought triplets to the wind speed and direction, including the wind retrieval and the ambiguity removal processing.
Data - Fast Registration with immediate access (Open)
ERS-1/2 SCATTEROMETER Ocean Wind field and Sea Ice probability [ASPS20.H/ASPS20.N]
The ASPS Level 2 products contain, for each node: the radar backscattering sigma nought for the three beams of the instrument, the four aliased wind solutions (Rank 1-4 wind vector) and the de-aliased wind vector flag, the sea-ice probability and sea-ice flag, the YAW quality flag. The wind retrieval is performed with the CMOD5N geophysical model function derived by ECMWF to compute the neutral winds rather than 10 m winds. ASPS L2.0 High resolution products are provided with a spatial resolution of 25x25 km and a grid spacing of 12.5 km. ASPS L2.0 Nominal resolution products are provided with a spatial resolution of 50x50 km and a grid spacing of 25 km. One product covers one orbit from ascending node crossing. Please consult the Product Quality Readme file before using the ERS ASPS data.
Data - Fast Registration with immediate access (Open)
ERS-2 SCATTEROMETER Surface Soil Moisture Time Series and Orbit product in High and Nominal Resolution [SSM.H/N.TS - SSM.H/N]
Surface soil moisture records are derived from the backscatter coefficient measured by the Scatterometer on-board the European Remote Sensing satellite (ERS-2) using the Technische Universität (TU) Wien soil moisture retrieval algorithm called WARP (WAter Retrieval Package). In the WARP algorithm, the relative surface soil moisture estimates, given in degree of saturation Sd, range between 0% and 100% are derived by scaling the normalized backscatter between the lowest/highest backscatter values corresponding to the driest/wettest soil conditions. Surface Soil Moisture - Time Series product: The products generated are the surface soil moisture time series, where for each grid point defined in a DGG (Discrete Global Grid) is stored the time series of soil moisture and its noise, the surface state flag, the geolocation and the satellite parameters. The spatial resolution of the products is about 25 km x 25 km (high resolution) or 50 km x 50 km (nominal resolution) geo-referenced on the WARP grid. The location of the points can be viewed interactively with the tool DGG Point Locator. Surface Soil Moisture - Orbit product: In addition to WARP, a second software package, referred to as WARP orbit, was developed in response to the strong demand of soil moisture estimates in satellite orbit geometry. The Level 2 soil moisture orbit product contains a series of Level 1 data information, such as the backscatter, the incidence angle and the azimuth angle for each triplet together with the surface soil moisture and its noise, normalized backscatter at 40° incidence angle, parameters useful for soil moisture, the geolocation and the satellite parameters. The soil moisture orbit product is available in two spatial resolutions with different spatial sampling distances: Spatial sampling on a regular 12.5 km grid in orbit geometry with a spatial resolution of about 25 km x 25 km (High resolution) Spatial sampling on a regular 25 km grid in orbit geometry with a spatial resolution of about 50 km x 50 km (Nominal resolution). The spatial resolution is defined by the Hamming window function, which is used for re-sample of raw backscatter measurements to the orbit grid in the Level-1 ground processor. Please consult the Product Quality Readme file before using the ERS-2 Surface Soil Moisture data.
Data - Fast Registration with immediate access (Open)
ERS-1/2 SCATTEROMETER Nominal Resolution back-scattering measurements, Ocean Wind field [UWI]
The ERS data reprocessed with the ASPS facility is also available in the UWI format to maintain the compatibility with the FD (Fast Delivery) products. The ASPS UWI product is organised in frames of 500 x 500 km providing the radar backscattering sigma nought for the three beams of the instrument plus the wind speed and direction. The wind retrieval is performed with the CMOD5N geophysical model function derived by ECMWF to compute the neutral winds rather than 10m winds. ASPS UWI products are provided with a spatial resolution of 50 x 50 km and a grid spacing of 25 km. One product covers one orbit from ascending node crossing. Please consult the Product Quality Readme file before using the ERS ASPS data.
Mission - Heritage Missions
ERS
The ERS programme was composed of two missions, ERS-1 and ERS-2, which together observed the Earth for 20 years, from 1991 to 2011.
Data - Campaigns (Open)
AirScatterGNSS
In this project an Airborne Wind Vector Scatterometer (AWVS) system was designed and built for measurements of sea surface backscattering from an aircraft.
Data - Campaigns (Open)
AROMAT-II
This campaign covers the fields of atmospheric composition: NO2, SO2, aerosols, over Romania (Bucharest and Turceni) and Germany (Berlin).
Data - Campaigns (Open)
AROMAT-I
The main objective of this AROMAT-I campaign was to test newly developed airborne sensors and to evaluate their capabilities as validation tools for future air quality space borne sensors, in particular TROPOMI.
Campaign
AROMAT-I
The main objective of this AROMAT-I campaign was to test newly developed airborne sensors and to evaluate their capabilities as validation tools for future air quality space borne sensors, in particular TROPOMI.
Campaign
NoSREx-I -II and -III
The Nordic Snow Radar Experiment (NoSREx) took place between November 2009 and May 2010. The objective of the campaign was to provide a continuous time series of active and passive microwave observations of snow cover in a representative location.
Campaign
TropiScat
The major objectives of the experiment were the temporal survey of the variation of the measurements in time scales ranging from diurnal, weekly, monthly, up to 12 months of observation.
Campaign
ROVE (1975-1981)
The Dutch research team ROVE (Radar Observation on Vegetation), funded by the remote sensing organization NIWARS, started in 1974 to investigate the scattering of microwaves by crops and soils, in order to help interpretation of radar imagery.
Campaign
AirScatterGNSS
In this project an Airborne Wind Vector Scatterometer (AWVS) system was designed and built for measurements of sea surface backscattering from an aircraft.