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.

Document - Newsletter

Earth Online Newsletter - 08 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 - Success Stories

ESA missions help to reveal worldwide lake water loss trend

Climate change, human consumption and sedimentation are depleting more than half of the world’s biggest lakes of water, according to a ground-breaking analysis that drew on three decades of satellite data.

Event - Conference

Living Planet Symposium 2022

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

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 - 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).

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.

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.

News - Infographics

Envisat - ESA's versatile Earth observation satellite

Learn more about ESA's Envisat mission - the largest Earth observation satellite ever built - in a new infographic.

Document - Technical Note

Envisat RA-2 Range Instrumental correction - USO clock periodvariations and associated auxiliary file

Data - Fast Registration with immediate access (Open)

Envisat RA-2 Geophysical Data Record - GDR [RA2_GDR__2P]

This is a RA-2 Geophysical Data Record (GDR) Full Mission Reprocessing (FMR) V3 product containing radar range and orbital altitude, wind speed, wave height, water vapour from the MWR and geophysical corrections. This FMR follows the first Envisat Altimetry reprocessing Version (V2.1) completed in 2012. The GDR and S-GDR data products were reprocessed for all cycles from 6 to 113 (May 2002 to April 2012) into a homogeneous standard in NetCDF format (close to Sentinel-3). For many aspects, the V3.0 reprocessed data are better than the previous dataset: In terms of available and valid data, the coverage is better, notably thanks to a better availability of MWR data at the beginning of the mission In terms of performance at cross-overs, the quality is improved: the annual signal and average of Mean SSH is decreased, as well as the standard deviation The new MWR characteristics were shown to improve largely the global quality of data. As well as the new tide model, the new MSS and the new orbit standard The Global and regional Mean Sea Level trend is very weakly impacted though the effort was put, this time, on the mesoscale restitution, rather than long term drift, as during V2.1 reprocessing. Please consult the Envisat RA-2/MWR Product Quality Readme file PDF before using the data.

Data - Fast Registration with immediate access (Open)

Envisat RA-2 Sensor and Geophysical Data Record - SGDR [RA2_MWS__2P]

This is a RA-2 Sensor and Geophysical Data Record (SGDR) Full Mission Reprocessing (FMR) V3 product. This FMR follows the first Envisat Altimetry reprocessing Version (V2.1) completed in 2012. The GDR and S-GDR data products were reprocessed for all cycles from 6 to 113 (May 2002 to April 2012) into a homogeneous standard in NetCDF format (close to Sentinel-3). The Sensor Data Record (SGDR) Product from RA-2/MWR includes the data in the GDR product (RA-2 geophysical data, MWR data) and also RA-2 averaged waveforms (18Hz) and RA-2 individual waveforms (1800Hz). This product is a continuation of ERS RA data. This data product has a coverage of 1 pass and pole to pole, a spatial sampling of about 390 m along track and a size of 31 to 40 MB, depending on presence of individual waveforms. The radiometric accuracy is 0.2 dB and auxiliary data include: Orbit state vectors (DORIS, FOS), RA2 and MWR characterisation data, Platform attitude, Gain calibration, USO frequency, ECMWF data, time relation, leap second, Ionospheric corrections, geoid, mean sea surface, slope data, and tide model (ocean, earth, loading, pole). Please consult the Envisat RA-2/MWR Product Quality Readme file before using the data.

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.

Data - Campaigns (Open)

THERMOPOLIS

The THERMOPOLIS 2009 campaign mainly served the DUE “Urban Heat islands (UHI) and Urban Thermography (UT) Project”

Campaign

THERMOPOLIS

The THERMOPOLIS 2009 campaign mainly served the DUE “Urban Heat islands (UHI) and Urban Thermography (UT) Project”

Activity - Quality

SEOM CAWA

The Advanced Clouds, Aerosols and WAter vapour products for Sentinel-3/OLCI project aims to develop and improve the advanced atmospheric retrieval algorithms developed for MERIS and OLCI instruments.

Document - Technical Note

ENVISAT RA-2 and MWR Products and Algorithms User Guide

The document is a brief guide for users to the ENVISAT 2nd generation Radar Altimeter (RA-2) and Microwave Radiometer (MWR) engineering (Level 1B) and geophysical (Level 2) Products Algorithms. Its immediate purpose is to convey basic information to users. The RA-2/MWR Product Handbook, which is now being drafted, will contain full details of the information needed by the users to exploit the RA-2/MWR data products.

Document - Product Cal/Val Plan/Report

Cal-Val evaluation of REAPER ERS altimeter data

The aim of this document is to present the results of the mission performance analysis performed at CLS on REAPER products. The final goal of this activity is to validate the REAPER processing scheme before performing a full reprocessing of altimeter data for the ERS-1 and ERS-2 missions.