- All Categories (188)
- Data (12)
- News (17)
- Missions (6)
- Events (16)
- Tools (3)
- Activities (7)
- Campaigns (1)
- Documents (126)
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 - 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
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
Cloud-free collections key for land monitoring
Satellite imagery is a crucially important tool for monitoring the land, but cloud cover can often block parts of Earth’s surface from view, limiting subsequent analyses.
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 - Thematic area articles
Global understanding of Earth's land surfaces greatly boosted by satellite data
ESA perform land surface monitoring with a range of instruments onboard satellites acquiring optical and radar data. Collections of data from these missions are freely available for research purposes.
Data - Data Description
Landsat 7 ETM+ European and Mediterranean Countries Cloud Free Collection
This dataset contains the cloud-free products from Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper collection acquired over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East; for each scene only one product is selected, with the minimal cloud coverage. The Landsat 7 ETM+ scenes typically cover 185 x 170 km. A standard full scene is nominally centred on the intersection between a Path and Row (the actual image centre can vary by up to 100 m). The data are system corrected.
Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)
Landsat 5 TM European and Mediterranean Countries Cloud Free Collection
This dataset contains the cloud-free products from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper collection acquired over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East; for each scene only one product is selected, with the minimal cloud coverage. The acquired Landsat TM scene covers approximately 183 x 172.8 km. A standard full scene is nominally centred on the intersection between a path and row (the actual image centre can vary by up to 100 m). The data are system corrected.
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
Event - Training
EO Summer School 7
ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation data.
Event - Training
EO Summer School 6
ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation data.
Event - Training
EO Summer School 5
ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation data.
Event - Training
EO Summer School 4
ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation 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).
News - Spotlight on EO community
Interviewing Mirko Albani
ESA’s Heritage Space Programme Manager describes the goals of the programme, some of the challenges involved in preserving and improving 40 years of historical Earth observation data, and his passion for curating this long-term archive.
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.
News - Thematic area articles
Satellite data boost global understanding of land surface
Understanding our changing land surface is essential in the study of climate change. Satellites are used to monitor changes to the material that covers Earth’s surface, so-called land cover, such as vegetation and water.
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.