5 incredible insights from EarthCARE’s second year in space 🚀 ☁️ European Space Agency - ESA’s Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) has had a stunning second year in orbit. Launched on 28 May 2024, the satellite is already well on its way to unravelling the mysteries of clouds and aerosols, and the role they play in heating and cooling our planet. It’s thanks to an international community of scientists, engineers, ESA and industry teams, and a special collaboration with JAXA: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Read the article for five incredible insights from EarthCARE’s last 12 months circling the globe, told through some of the wonderful images shared by our Data, Innovation and Science Cluster as they bring EarthCARE science to the world. 👇👇👇 🔗https://lnkd.in/eVhbHg5q The images show results gleaned from each of EarthCARE's four instruments, as well as the impressive extent of the international effort to calibrate and validate the satellite's measurements. 🖼️ 1 - Multispectral imager sees into the eye of Tropical Cyclone Vince 🖼️ 2 - Atmospheric lidar measures Canadian wildfire smoke 🖼️ 3 - Cloud profiling radar measures a mid-latitude cyclone over Iceland 🖼️ 4 - Broadband radiometer spots contrails over the Bay of Biscay 🖼️ 5 - EarthCARE cal/val underflights 2024-2025
ESA Earth Explorers
Ricerca spaziale e tecnologia
ESA’s pioneering science missions for Earth: news, success stories, data and operational updates
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ESA’s Earth Explorers demonstrate how pioneering space technology can deliver an astounding range of scientific findings about our planet. Since the first successful launch in 2009, our satellites have surpassed expectations to provide exceptional operational data and long-term climate records. We address the urgent challenges society faces today and is expected to face in the decades to come, such as climate change and sea level rise, ecosystem health, food and water security, extreme weather prediction and disaster risk reduction. Our unique, diverse and versatile missions explore the whole Earth system, from its core to the farthest reaches of the atmosphere, lighting the way for future Earth Observation. 🍎 GOCE: ESA’s gravity mission 💧 SMOS: ESA’s water mission 🧊 CryoSat: ESA’s ice mission 🧲 Swarm: ESA’s magnetic field mission 🌬️ Aeolus: ESA’s wind mission ☁️ EarthCARE: ESA’s cloud and aerosol mission, with JAXA 🌳 Biomass: ESA’s forest mission 🌿 FLEX: ESA’s photosynthesis mission 🌡️ FORUM: ESA’s thermal radiation mission 🫨 Harmony: ESA’s surface dynamics mission ꩜ WIVERN: ESA's cloud dynamics mission ❓ Earth Explorer 12 Earth Explorer data and science products are developed by ESA along with academic and industry partners and are open and accessible via the Earth Online website.
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The EarthCARE acquisition on 08th May 2026 (UTC 13.20 c.a.) over the Mediterraneum Sea (Sicily and Malta) reveals a sand concentration from Sahara Desert. The MSI RGB and Dust RGB highlight the transported sand over the sea. The ATLID EBD - lidar ratio (or extinction-to-backscatter ratio) provides indications on the aerosol types (Saharan Dust: typically ranges from 45 to 55 sr). The ATLID EBD – Mie backscatter profiles to classify the type of particulate matter, distinguishing between spherical aerosols (like urban pollution) and non-spherical ones (like desert sand or volcanic ash). A lidar backscatter coefficient measures how much laser light is scattered back to the sensor by particles like dust. Particle extinction provides information on dust suspended in the atmosphere and capacity to absorb and scatter laser light, attenuating the lidar's beam.
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CryoSat takes a crack at complicated summer sea ice ☀️ 🌊 🧊 Sea ice is full of cracks. Telling apart the leads (open water in the cracks) from the floes (the floating fragments of ice) is essential for calculating the elevation and thickness of sea ice from space. As if that weren't already tricky enough with sea ice constantly drifting and deforming, with rough surfaces confusing matters, melt ponds on summer sea ice complicate things yet further. Fear not! After first introducing a method to take the dazzle out of surface meltwater measurements in 2022, a team of scientists earlier this year introduced an enhanced neural network for Arctic summer sea ice. Even better news, it is used for the CryoTEMPO Summer Sea Ice product! Read the paper, by Anne Braakmann-Folgmann, Jack Landy, Dr. Geoffrey Dawson and Robert Ricker 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ed5NXy2h More on the CryoTEMPO summer sea ice product, developed by a consortium led by UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling & Lancaster University's UKCEH Centre of Excellence in Environmental Data Science (CEEDS) 👉 https://lnkd.in/eWHjnp8m
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Couldn't make the Aeolus science and cal/val conference in Lipari? 🌋 We've made all the oral and poster presentations available, so you can check them out even if you missed it 👉 https://lnkd.in/eMbkSsuz For more about the event, and Aeolus's lidar legacy 👉 https://lnkd.in/dTfk5GZP
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ESA Earth Explorers ha diffuso questo post
A new dataset from the European Space Agency - ESA Climate Change Initiative 🌳 #Above_Ground_Biomass project 🌳 (#CCI_Biomass) is now available on the Open Data Portal (#ODP) and the #CEDA catalogue: ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eBkZ3bfk ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eHpq542j This current & latest release of the #CCI _Biomass data products (version 7) consists of global maps of AGB for each of the years 2005-2012 and 2015-2024. From the previous version, it is 9 additional years released in version 7 Before 2015, ALOS PALSAR and Envisat ASAR are used, then ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 & Sentinel-1 are used. It was done in close collaboration and with special processing by our colleagues at JAXA: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. More information on the project: https://lnkd.in/ev59VEvd ESA Earth Observation ESA Earth Explorers ESA Earth Observation Data Users CEOS (Committee on Earth Observation Satellites) Prifysgol Aberystwyth University The University of Sheffield CESBIO CNRS GAMMA Remote Sensing AG GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences University of Leeds University of Leicester #EOSJENA
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Deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, liquid iron unexpectedly started moving strongly eastwards... ↪️🧲 The reasons for this unexplained reversal in the flow of molten material in Earth's outer core are still a mystery. But European Space Agency - ESA’s Earth Explorers Swarm and CryoSat are on the case. Swarm, for example, allowed researchers to detect wave-like accelerations and rapidly changing flow structures. "The large-scale flow reversal beneath the Pacific raises new questions about the behaviour of Earth’s deep interior," says lead author Frederik Dahl Madsen. "Continued monitoring will be essential to determine how the flow evolves over the coming years.” Elisabetta Iorfida says, "This research raises intriguing questions about how Earth’s deepest layers are dynamically connected. "As the magnetic field continues to evolve, satellite missions are providing an increasingly detailed view of the dynamic processes unfolding deep inside our planet, revealing that Earth’s core may be far more variable and complex than once believed.” Read the article to discover more! 🔗https://lnkd.in/eDTqGkmY
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Missed the EarthCARE science seminar? 🤔 Don't worry! You can catch all of them on YouTube. 👉 https://lnkd.in/eqw86-mY The next science seminar will be on 17 June and will be about 3D radiative transfer and effects. We recently published a fascinating insight into EarthCARE's ability to measure such effects, thanks to EarthCARE's unique view of a hurricane eyewall. For more information on upcoming seminars, and where to find the links 👉 https://lnkd.in/eptYs89W Read the story on why climate models need clouds in 3D 👉 https://lnkd.in/exXxc2vx 🖼️ Jason Cole of Environment and Climate Change Canada and Edward Baudrez of Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI)
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What you always wanted to know about Biomass... 🛰️🔎🌳❓ Just out in IEEE Xplore - BIOMASS: European Space Agency - ESA's P-Band SAR Mission A new paper details all you need to know about our pioneering forest mission. Its objective? To deliver estimates of above-ground forest biomass, forest height, and forest disturbance with unprecedented accuracy. Its primary goal? To quantify the distribution and changes in forest biomass, reducing uncertainties in carbon flux estimates and informing climate models. Its advanced P-band synthetic aperture radar and innovative approach means the satellite can penetrate dense forest canopies, capturing data even in challenging environments. Aside from that, we will provide valuable observational data for ice sheets, deserts, the ionosphere, below canopy topography, and more. 🖼️ This Biomass image, captured over Brazil on 18 June 2025, shows the confluence of the Purus River and the Amazon River in northern Brazil. Read the paper to find out more 👉 https://lnkd.in/ehSbj4in
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How does an ice satellite detect a geomagnetic storm? This 🧲 magnetic Monday 🧲 we have a story of unique innovation in satellite technology. An upgrade to its operational magnetometer means that CryoSat, our ice mission, is also able to measure changes in Earth’s magnetosphere with scientific precision, using data to calibrate its measurements from ESA Earth Observation’s dedicated magnetic field mission, Swarm. CryoSat's platform magnetometer ensures it orbits at the right altitude and directs its science instruments towards the right part of Earth’s surface. It is an operational instrument and was not designed to produce scientific data about Earth’s magnetic environment. At the beginning of this year, CryoSat was able to put its new-found skills to good use when a particularly strong X-class solar flare caused a geomagnetic storm in Earth’s atmosphere. Over a period of three days, CryoSat was able to contribute scientific data to measure the intensity of the geomagnetic storm, which proved to be of high quality and complementary to data produced by Swarm. You can read more about that event here 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dQAXgMYd Swarm remains ESA’s primary mission dedicated to studying Earth’s magnetic field, while CryoSat maintains its key focus on measuring and monitoring changes to ice sheets and our polar oceans. The crucial thing to point out is that CryoSat’s platform magnetometer is being used innovatively to measure Earth’s stronger external magnetic field variations. It is providing excellent data compared to other platform magnetometers on other non-magnetic missions and the upgrade is helping the geomagnetic community by providing a complementary dataset. You can access CryoSat's magnetometer data via the Swarm dissemination server on Earth Online, and thanks to another recent update, we might have more exciting news on that coming very soon... 🍿 https://lnkd.in/e9RFD7uY Finally, a recent paper by Nils Olsen gives us the latest insights into CryoSat's handy platform magnetometer data, as well as those of Grace and Grace-FO 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eAW_rA-6 📹 An animation of the geomagnetic storm measured by CryoSat, thanks to Dr. Alexander Grayver, Nils Olsen & Chiara Luisa Ferrario
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‼️ Migration of CryoSat PDS network ‼️ A notice to CryoSat data users: migration of the operational CryoSat PDS network in Kiruna will take place between 7.00 CEST on Monday 18 May and 17.00 CEST on Tuesday 19 May 2026. During this period, temporary outages may affect access to the systems and the availability of data hosted on the science server. Updates will be posted on Earth Online once the work and testing is done 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e-uFjX8e
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