Europe's Sentinel-1A satellite has shown that the Mekong River Delta - one of the world's major rice-growing areas - saw a significant drop in productivity over the past year, illustrating the effect of El Niño on food security.

Developers of apps that use satellite data to assist the agricultural industry took home the top two prizes at this year's ESA App Camp in Barcelona.

ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission has gone beyond its original scientific brief of delivering critical information for understanding the water cycle - this versatile satellite is now being used to predict drought and improve crop yield in regions prone to famine.

Using satellite data, scientists are improving their understanding of the relationship between droughts and heatwaves in order to forecast hot spells better in the future.

As global temperatures gradually increase, more water is expected to evaporate into the atmosphere. But using satellite data, scientists have discovered that El Niño-induced droughts have caused global declines in evapotranspiration despite rising temperatures.

Like thermometers in the sky, satellite instruments can measure the temperatures of Earth's surfaces. ESA's new GlobTemperature project is merging these data from a variety of spaceborne sensors to provide scientists with a one-stop shop for land, lake and ice temperature data.

The first global map of vegetation from the recently launched Proba-V has been unveiled, demonstrating that the minisatellite is on track to continue a 15-year legacy of global vegetation monitoring from space.

A service designed to improve natural resource management and detect hydropower generation and areas at risk of drought was selected by an online audience as the winner in one of seven categories of the GMES Masters competition.

Wetlands are havens of biodiversity, and have important ecological, hydrological and economic value, but their misuse can have devastating consequences. Satellite data are being used for wetland conservation and management.

Water held in soil plays an important role in the climate system. The dataset released by ESA is the first remote-sensing soil moisture data record spanning the period 1978 to 2010 - a predecessor of the data now being provided by ESA's SMOS mission.