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News - General News
ESA's improved Earth system data records: what is in store for the future?
Fundamental Data Records (FDRs) are instrumental in advancing our understanding of Earth systems and for addressing societal challenges effectively. These long-term records contain uncertainty-quantified, calibrated and geo-located multi-instrument/multi-platform satellite sensor data spanning several decades to support climate-related applications.
News - Success Stories
Commercial and international data for fire monitoring
As climate change sparks a surge in the frequency and intensity of wildfires, satellite data disseminated through ESA’s Third Party Missions (TPM) programme are helping scientists to track and investigate these potentially damaging natural events.
News - Data Release news
Full European Landsat data collection now available under the same catalogue
The Full European Landsat data collection, from Landsat-1 to Landsat-8, is now available under the same catalogue
Document - Proceedings
EO-Summer-School-4-Remote-sensing-of-sea-ice.pdf
This presentation from ESA's EO Summer School 4 describes the remote sensing of sea ice from the air and satellites
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 - Thematic area articles
Space helps monitor Earth’s changing biosphere
Earth’s biosphere is continually changing. Through its pioneering Earth observation missions, ESA is making critical contributions to monitor these changes and their impacts on Earth’s water and carbon cycles.
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 - Events and Proceedings
National missions in the spotlight at the Living Planet Symposium
In the framework of ESA’s Third Party Missions (TPM) programme, the agency offers access to the full data archives of almost 50 satellite missions, which are owned by organisations around the world.
News - Data Release news
New Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data now available
Within ESA’s Landsat offering, access to the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data is now available.
Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)
Landsat 8 Collection 2 European Coverage
This dataset contains the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection 2 data, both Level-1 and Level-2, acquired since the beginning of the mission. Landsat-8 Collection 2 is the result of a reprocessing effort on the archive and on newly acquired products with significant improvement with respect to Collection 1 on data quality, obtained by means of advancements in data processing and algorithm development. Primarily, this involves a relevant improvement in the absolute geolocation accuracy (now re-baselined to the European Space Agency Copernicus Sentinel-2 Global Reference Image (GRI) but also includes updated digital elevation modelling sources, improved Radiometric Calibration (even correction for the TIRS striping effect), enhanced Quality Assessment Bands, updated and consistent metadata files and usage of Cloud Optimised Georeferenced (COG) Tagged Image File Format. Landsat-8 Level-1 products combine data from the two Landsat instruments, OLI and TIRS. The Level-1 products generated can be either L1TP or L1GT: L1TP - Level-1 Precision Terrain (Corrected) (L1T) products: Radiometrically calibrated and orthorectified using ground control points (GCPs) and digital elevation model (DEM) data to correct for relief displacement. The highest quality Level-1 products suitable for pixel-level time series analysis. GCPs used for L1TP correction are derived from the Global Land Survey 2000 (GLS2000) data set. L1GT - Level-1 Systematic Terrain (Corrected) (L1GT) products: L1GT data products consist of Level-0 product data with systematic radiometric, geometric and terrain corrections applied and resampled for registration to a cartographic projection, referenced to the WGS84, G873, or current version. The dissemination server contains three different classes of Level-1 products Real Time (RT): Newly acquired Landsat-8 OLI/TIRS data are processed upon downlink but use an initial TIRS line-of-sight model parameters; the data are made available in less than 12 hours (4-6 hours typically). Once the data have been reprocessed with the refined TIRS parameters, the products are transitioned to either Tier 1 or Tier 2 and removed from the Real-Time tier (in 14-16 days). Tier 1 (T1): Landsat scenes with the highest available data quality are placed into Tier 1 and are considered suitable for time-series analysis. Tier 1 includes Level-1 Precision and Terrain (L1TP) corrected data that have well-characterized radiometry and are inter-calibrated across the different Landsat instruments. The georegistration of Tier 1 scenes is consistent and within prescribed image-to-image tolerances of ≦ 12-metre radial root mean square error (RMSE). Tier 2 (T2): Landsat scenes not meeting Tier 1 criteria during processing are assigned to Tier 2. Tier 2 scenes adhere to the same radiometric standard as Tier 1 scenes, but do not meet the Tier 1 geometry specification due to less accurate orbital information (specific to older Landsat sensors), significant cloud cover, insufficient ground control, or other factors. This includes Systematic Terrain (L1GT) and Systematic (L1GS) processed data. Landsat-8 Level-2 products are generated from L1GT and L1TP Level-1 products that meet the <76 degrees Solar Zenith Angle constraint and include the required auxiliary data inputs to generate a scientifically viable product. The data are available a couple of days after the Level-1 T1/T2. The Level-2 products generated can be L2SP or L2SR: L2SP - Level-2 Science Products (L2SP) products: include Surface Reflectance (SR), Surface Temperature (ST), ST intermediate bands, an angle coefficients file, and Quality Assessment (QA) Bands. L2SR - Level-2 Surface Reflectance (L2SR) products: include Surface Reflectance (SR), an angle coefficients file, and Quality Assessment (QA) Bands; it is generated if ST could not be generated. Two different categories of Level-1 products are offered: LC with Optical, Thermal and Quality Map images, LO with Optical and Quality Map images (Thermal not available). For the Level-2 data, only LC combined products are generated.
News - Data Release news
New Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data available from January
From the beginning of 2022, ESA will start the distribution of the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 products.
News - Success Stories
COP26 fuels interest in satellite data
As COP26 stimulates action to reduce global warming, the essential role of satellite data in understanding and monitoring climate change is apparent.
Event - Conference
GRSG 2015 Conference
The 26th Annual GRSG Conference 'Challenges in Geological Remote Sensing' focused on a wide range of remote sensing applications, tools, latest developments and sensors.
Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)
AVHRR Level-1B Local Area Coverage Imagery
This collection is composed of AVHRR L1B products (1.1 km) reprocessed from the NOAA POES and Metop AVHRR sensors data acquired at the University of Dundee and University of Bern ground stations and from the ESA and University of Bern data historical archive. The product format is the NOAA AVHRR Level 1B that combines the AVHRR data from the HRPT stream with ancillary information like Earth location and calibration data which can be applied by the user. Other appended parameters are time codes, quality indicators, solar and satellite angles and telemetry. Two data collections cover Europe and the neighbouring regions in the period of 1 January 1981 to 31 December 2020 and the acquired data in the context of the 1-KM project in the ‘90s. During the early 1990’s various groups, including the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the Commission of the European Communities (CEC), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) Science Team and ESA concluded that a global land 1 KM AVHRR data set would have been crucial to study and develop algorithms for several land products for the Earth Observing System. USGS, NOAA, ESA and other non-U.S. AVHRR receiving stations endorsed the initiative to collect a global land 1-km multi-temporal AVHRR data set over all land surfaces using NOAA's TIROS "afternoon" polar-orbiting satellite. On 1 April 1992, the project officially began up to the end of 1999 with the utilisation of 23 stations worldwide plus the NOAA local area coverage (LAC) on-board recorders. The global land 1-km AVHRR dataset is composed of 5 channels, raw AVHRR dataset at 1.1 km resolution from the NOAA-11 and NOAA-14 satellites covering land surfaces, inland water and coastal areas. Global Land 1 km AVHRR Data Set Project HRPT Ground Station Network (as of 1 April 1992) and Acquisition Areas for LAC Recorded Data Spatial coverage: Check the spatial coverage of the collection on a map available on the Third Party Missions Dissemination Service: AVHRR L1B 1.1 KM AVHRR L1B LAC Out-of-Europe.
Document - Product Handbook
AVHRR-Handbook.pdf
The AVHRR user handbook provides details about the content of the consolidated and harmonised data set archived at ESA facilities.
News - Success Stories
Forty years of heritage data highlight warming European lakes
In the last decade, climate change has taken centre stage in both the public and scientific arenas, as increasingly extreme weather and human impact on the environment have become more apparent.
Tools - Visualisation
EVDC Orbit Prediction Tool
The EVDC Orbit Prediction and Overpass Tool generates and visualises satellite's overpasses.
Mission - Heritage Missions
Landsat Series
The Landsat Series is the world's longest running system of satellites for moderate-resolution optical remote sensing for land, coastal areas and shallow waters.
Mission - Heritage Missions
NOAA POES
NOAA's AVHRR sensor is carried on the POES mission, a constellation of polar orbiting weather satellites.
Activity - Quality
EDAP
The ESA Earthnet Data Assessment Pilot (EDAP) project will perform assessments for various missions to ensure the delivered data is fit for purpose.