ESA's biomass satellite goes ahead

A press release from the European Space Agency: Following the initial selection in 2013 for Biomass to become ESA’s seventh Earth Explorer mission and the completion of preparatory activities, ESA Member States yesterday gave the green light for its full implementation for launch in 2020.

The mission addresses one of the most fundamental components in the Earth system: the status and dynamics of tropical forests. Its primary scientific objectives are to determine the distribution of above-ground biomass in these forests and to measure annual changes in this stock over the period of the mission.

The amount of biomass and forest height will be measured at a resolution of 200 m, and forest disturbances such as clear-cutting at a resolution of 50 m, providing an important tool for sustainable forest management.

Studying the world’s tropical biomass is key to our understanding Earth’s climate. The mission will provide the first opportunity to explore Earth’s surface at the ‘P-band’ radar frequency from space. In addition to studying forests, the data are expected to be used for monitoring the ionosphere, glaciers and ice sheets, and for mapping subsurface geology in deserts and surface topography below dense vegetation.

Salinity matters

A press release from the European Space Agency: Measurements of salt held in surface seawater are becoming ever-more important for us to understand ocean circulation and Earth’s water cycle. ESA’s SMOS mission is proving essential to the quest.

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite, SMOS, is monitoring changes in the amount of water held in the surface layers of soil and concentrations of salt in the top layer of seawater – both of which are a consequence of the continuous exchange of water between the oceans, the atmosphere and the land. Launched in 2009, SMOS has provided the longest continuous record of sea-surface salinity measurements from space.

The salinity of surface seawater is controlled largely by the balance between evaporation and precipitation, but fresh water from rivers and the freezing and melting of ice also changes the concentrations. With a wealth of salinity data from SMOS now in hand complemented by measurements from the US–Argentinian Aquarius satellite, which uses a different technique, scientists gathered recently at the UK Met Office to review the benefits this has brought to science.

Speaking at the Ocean Salinity Science and Salinity Remote-Sensing Workshop, Prof. Dame Julia Slingo, Met Office Chief Scientist, said, “We need to understand the role of salinity in the closure of the hydrology cycle – arguably the weakest point in global climate modelling.

“Salinity, and particularly sea-surface salinity, is a challenging but important topic for ocean circulation and climate variability about which we need to know more, especially given the recent climate-warming hiatus. The SMOS mission, now celebrating five years in orbit, is providing detailed global measurements of ocean-surface salinity that are now used to address some of these challenges.”....

From the European Space Agency: Average sea-surface salinity values. Areas of red indicate regions of high salinity, and areas of green indicate regions of low salinity. The map is overlaid with the simplified global circulation pattern called the ‘thermohaline circulation’. The blue arrows indicate cool deeper currents and the red indicate warmer surface currents. Temperature (thermal) and salinity (haline) variations are key variables affecting ocean circulation.

European Space Agency satellite reveals gravity dip from ice loss

A press release from the European Space Agency: Although not designed to map changes in Earth’s gravity over time, ESA’s extraordinary satellite has shown that the ice lost from West Antarctica over the last few years has left its signature.

More than doubling its planned life in orbit, GOCE spent four years measuring Earth’s gravity in unprecedented detail.  Scientists are now armed with the most accurate gravity model ever produced. This is leading to a much better understanding of many facets of our planet – from the boundary between Earth’s crust and upper mantle to the density of the upper atmosphere.

The strength of gravity at Earth’s surface varies subtly from place to place owing to factors such as the planet’s rotation and the position of mountains and ocean trenches.

Recently, the high-resolution measurements from GOCE over Antarctica between November 2009 and June 2012 have been analysed by scientists from the German Geodetic Research Institute, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the Jet Propulsion Lab in USA and the Technical University of Munich in Germany.

Remarkably, they found that the decrease in the mass of ice during this period was mirrored in GOCE’s measurements, even though the mission was not designed to detect changes over time.

Using gravity data to assess changes in ice mass is not new. The NASA–German Grace satellite, which was designed to measure change, has been providing this information for over 10 years. However, measurements from Grace are much coarser than those of GOCE, so they cannot be used to look at features such as Antarctica’s smaller ‘catchment basins’....

Changes in Earth’s gravity field resulting from loss of ice from West Antarctica between November 2009 and June 2012 (mE = 10–12 s–2).  A combination of data from ESA’s GOCE mission and NASA’s Grace satellites shows the ‘vertical gravity gradient change’

Satellites improving lives in rural Africa

A press release from the European Space Agency: An ESA-supported project is showing how satcoms can help farmers, voters and educators in rural Africa. The three elements of the Sway4edu project are helping to run elections, educate teachers and improve radio programming.

Satellite terminals provide Internet connectivity, with solar panels and batteries (where needed), laptops, tablets, a projector with screen, and loudspeakers. Sway4edu is led by Openet Technologies, a small Italian company active in using satcoms for eGovernment services, working with Luxembourg’s SES and supported by ESA’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems programme.

The Rural Radios element is developing a satellite-assisted radio service to support farmers, workers and the population of the Democratic Republic of Congo on food security, rural and farmer subsistence, and climate change. Through the online Openet eLearning platform broadcasters can take courses, developed with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, on delivering better radio programmes.

Feedback from broadcasters during pilot tests was highly positive: “Very good initiative to provide this tool for the use of rural radios in the bid for community development,” commented one.

Last September, Openet Technologies was contracted to provide Internet access for three years to 10 rural stations in DR Congo with the Federation de Radio de Proximité, which manages 400 such stations. By the end of this year, the contract could be extended to 100.

In October 2013, the company began providing a year of Internet and multicast connectivity for 26 rural radio stations in Mali. The contract was signed with the  Fondation Hirondelle in Switzerland, which manages a group of 62 stations in Mali – the rest are expected to subscribe to the service by the end of this year. The multicast service is provided via the Astra-4A satellite....

Monitoring air quality takes the next step

A press release from the European Space Agency: With air pollution linked to millions of deaths around the world, it has never been more important to monitor the air we breathe. Today marks a significant step forward as a deal is secured to build a crucial space sensor for tracking the world’s air quality.

The €144 million contract for the Sentinel-5 instrument of Europe’s Copernicus programme was formally signed today with Airbus Defence and Space in Ottobrunn, Germany.

“The Sentinel-5 instrument will be very important to continue the monitoring of our atmosphere by an operational system,” noted Volker Liebig, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes. Together with the launch of Sentinel-1A just days away, the ambitious Copernicus programme is now on the road to realising its full potential.”

The Sentinel satellites are dedicated to providing data for Europe’s Copernicus initiative – the first operational environmental observation system worldwide. Through Copernicus, data from all the Sentinel missions are freely available to users. Delivering important data on the composition of the atmosphere, Sentinel-5 is set to make a step change in monitoring and forecasting global air quality.

This state-of-the-art instrument will be installed on the polar-orbiting MetOp Second Generation satellite. It will monitor the composition of Earth’s atmosphere globally on a daily basis by measuring trace gases – such as ozone, sulphur dioxide, methane and carbon monoxide – and aerosols that affect air quality and climate. The readings will help to both monitor and differentiate between natural and human-produced emissions, providing new insight into the human impact on air quality, ozone and climate....

Image from the ESA website

CryoSat measures European storm surge

A press release from CryoSat at the European Space Agency: ESA’s CryoSat satellite measured the storm surge from the recent North Sea storms, as high waters passed through the Kattegat sea between Denmark and Sweden. During 5–6 December, a major storm passed through northern Europe causing flooding, blackouts, grounding flights and bringing road, rail and sea travel to a halt.

Since the storm coincided with a period of high tides in the North Sea, there were extremely high sea levels – a ‘storm surge’. In the UK, sea levels were at their highest since the 1953 North Sea Floods, while in Germany, parts of Hamburg were flooded.

On Friday night, CryoSat passed over Kattegat, providing an estimate of total water levels. The observations matched predictions, helping to confirm these models. The measurements were made by CryoSat’s radar altimeter that – although designed to measure sea-ice thickness – is providing outstanding results over sea and, especially, coastal areas.

Until recently, altimeter measurements of sea-level height could only be made over open oceans because of land interference closer to the coast. In the last few years, however, progress has been made in reducing these effects, also thanks to the new generation of radar altimeters being heralded by CryoSat. This has allowed scientists not only to map water levels closer to the coast, but also profile land surfaces and inland water targets such as small lakes, rivers and their intricate tributaries.

Altimeter measurements from space can be used to validate storm surge models as well as provide near-realtime information that can be incorporated into predictions. Under ESA’s Data User Element, the eSurge project is helping to optimise the use of altimetry and other types of satellite data to improve storm surge forecasting....

Sea-surface height over the Kattegat sea as measured by CryoSat on 6 December 2013. Image by ESA/NOC

Cryosat measures largest-ever flood beneath Antarctica

European Space Agency: ESA’s CryoSat satellite has found a vast crater in Antarctica’s icy surface. Scientists believe the crater was left behind when a lake lying under about 3 km of ice suddenly drained. Far below the thick ice sheet that covers Antarctica, there are lakes of fresh water without a direct connection to the ocean. These lakes are of great interest to scientists who are trying to understand water transport and ice dynamics beneath the frozen Antarctic surface – but this information is not easy to obtain.

One method is to drill holes through kilometres of ice to the water – a difficult endeavour in the harsh conditions of the polar regions. But instead of looking down towards the ice, a team of European scientists is looking to the sky to improve our understanding of subglacial water and its transport.

By combining new measurements acquired by CryoSat with older data from NASA’s ICESat satellite, the team has mapped the large crater left behind by a lake, and even determined the scale of the flood that formed it.

From 2007 to 2008, six cubic kilometres of water – about the same amount that is stored in Scotland’s Loch Ness – drained from the lake, making it the largest event of its kind ever recorded. That amount of water equals a tenth of the melting that occurs beneath Antarctica each year. Since the end of 2008, the lake appears to be refilling but six times slower than it drained. It could take decades to reform.

The study, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, highlights CryoSat’s unique capacity to map changes in Antarctica’s subglacial lakes in 3D, and sheds new light on events at the base of the ice sheet....

Location of the crater in Victoria Land, East Antarctica at about 73ºS and 156ºE. The color scale shows height derived from CryoSat data. The crater is located within the white box., image copyright ESA/M. McMillan

An ESA satellite measure's Europe's soil moisture before flood

European Space Agency: As parts of central Europe are battling with the most extensive floods in centuries, forecasters are hoping that ESA’s SMOS satellite will help to improve the accuracy of flood prediction in the future.

As its name suggests, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission monitors the amount of water held in the surface layers of the soil and the concentration of salt in the top layer of seawater. This information is helping scientists understand more about how water is cycled between the oceans, atmosphere and land – Earth’s water cycle. It is also helping to improve weather forecasts.

The massive flooding that central Europe is currently suffering was brought about by a wet spring and sudden heavy rains.

 SMOS carries a novel microwave sensor to capture images of ‘brightness temperature’ to derive information on soil moisture. Prior to the torrential rains, SMOS showed that soils in Germany were showing record levels of moisture – in fact, the highest ever observed.

The animation above shows the wet soils in blues and the dryer soils in yellows. ESA’s SMOS mission scientist, Matthias Drusch, explains, “Data from SMOS can be used to monitor the saturation of the soil.

“At the end of May we see that the soil was almost fully saturated, with record values for moisture. More rain meant that it immediately ran off as the surplus water could not soak into the soil, and this resulted in these terrible floods....

GIF from the ESA website

ESA's next Earth Explorer satellite will map the tropics

Space Daily via ESA: ESA's Earth Observation Programme Board has selected 'Biomass' to become the seventh Earth Explorer mission. The innovative satellite aims to map and monitor one of Earth's most precious resources. Following the review of three candidate concepts at the Board's meeting, the Biomass mission concept is set to become the next in a series of satellites developed to further our understanding of Earth.

The satellite will be designed to provide, for the first time from space, P-band radar measurements that are optimised to determine the amount of biomass and carbon stored in the world's forests with greater accuracy than ever before.

This information, which is poorly known in the tropics, is essential to our understanding of the role of forests in Earth's carbon cycle and in climate change. Reliable knowledge of tropical forest biomass also underpins the implementation of the UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative - an international effort to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and land degradation in developing countries.

In addition, the measurements made by Biomass offer the opportunity to map the elevation of Earth's terrain under dense vegetation, yielding information on subsurface geology and allowing the estimation of glacier and ice-sheet velocities, critical to our understanding of ice-sheet mass loss in a warming Earth....

SMOS satellite measurements improve as ground radars switch off

European Space Agency: Over a dozen radio signals that have hindered data collection on ESA’s SMOS water mission have been switched off. The effort also benefits satellites such as NASA’s Aquarius mission, which measures ocean salinity at the same frequency.

We all know what happens when you place a cell phone too close to a speaker: seconds before the phone rings, that obnoxious buzz interrupts your favourite song. This is radio interference – an unwanted reception of radio signals. Not only can it interrupt the music from your stereo, it can also impede satellite measurements.

ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite was launched in 2009 to improve our understanding of our planet’s water cycle. In order to do this, it measures the microwaves emitted by Earth in the 1400–1427 MHz range. 

SMOS immediately revealed that many unlawful signals were being transmitted around the world in this frequency range, rendering some of its measurements unusable for scientific purposes. Over the years, ESA has investigated exactly where the interference is coming from.

As national authorities have collaborated with ESA to pinpoint the origin and switch these unlawful emissions off, the interference has waned. One of the largest areas of contamination in the northern hemisphere is over the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans, primarily from military radars....

In May 2011, radio frequency interference (RFI) still hindered salinity readings. Over a dozen RFIs were switched off prior to May 2012, making salinity measurements more accurate thereafter.  Credits: N. Reul, IFREMER/CATDS

Envisat services interrupted

European Space Agency: After 10 years of service, Envisat has stopped sending data to Earth. ESA’s mission control is working to re-establish contact with the satellite. Although this landmark mission has been in orbit twice as long as it was designed for, ESA hopes to keep the satellite in service until the launch of the successor Sentinel missions.

The first sign that there was a problem came on 8 April when contact with the satellite was unexpectedly lost, preventing the reception of any data as it passed over the Kiruna ground station in Sweden. ESA’s mission control team declared a spacecraft emergency and immediately called for support from additional ESA tracking stations around the world. A team of operations and flight dynamics specialists and engineers was quickly assembled.

In a concerted effort, the recovery team, which included experts from industry, spent the next days trying to re-establish communications with the satellite. While it is known that Envisat remains in a stable orbit around Earth, efforts to resume contact with the satellite have, so far, not been successful.

As is standard practice, an anomaly review board is investigating the cause for the break in communications....

An earthbound model of Envisat, full size, shot by abrev, public domain

ESA-NASA collaboration furthers sea-ice research

PhysOrg: A carefully executed operation to validate data from CryoSat has shown what can be accomplished when ESA, NASA and others join forces to further our understanding of how the fragile polar environment is responding to climate change.

In support of ESA's CryoSat ice mission, which was launched a year ago to monitor changes in ice thickness, a gruelling validation campaign is being carried out in one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth.

The one-month Arctic expedition is a major undertaking, with scientific teams from numerous organisations braving temperatures of –30°C in central Greenland, Svalbard and the Fram Strait, Devon Island and offshore from Alert, Ellesmere Island, in northern Canada.

To ensure that CryoSat is delivering accurate data, the scientists are gathering a wealth of ice and snow measurements on the ground and from the air. These in situ measurements will be compared with measurements delivered by CryoSat, thereby guaranteeing that the mission is delivering the best quality data possible…

An example of a snow-thickness map produced by the ground team. To produce this map, snow-thickness measurements were painstakingly collected over a 20×20 m grid and processed into the image. Later, these data will be compared to airborne data from ESA and NASA instruments. It takes a team of three scientists about 90 minutes to collect the measurements for such an image. Credits: ESA

ESA Arctic ice campaign takes off

Terra Daily: To guarantee ESA's CryoSat mission is delivering the best data possible, scientists have set out on a major expedition to the Arctic - part of a collaborative effort between ESA and NASA to gather ice measurements as the satellite orbits above. CryoSat was launched a year ago today to monitor the changes in the thickness of marine ice in the polar oceans and in the vast ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica.

Orbiting closer to the poles than any other satellite and carrying the first radar altimeter of its kind, CryoSat is providing scientists with the data they need to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between ice and climate change. As with any Earth observation mission, it is important to validate the readings acquired from space. This involves comparing the satellite data with measurements taken in situ, usually on the ground and from the air.

For CryoSat, that means sending teams to one of the harshest environments on Earth. Scientists embarking on this campaign to the Arctic are not only facing the physical challenges of working in a bitterly cold and hostile environment, but also a huge logistical undertaking….

The north pole in a 2000 satellite image from NASA

European Space Agency's sharp eyes on coastal waters

European Space Agency: Our growing reliance on coastal waters for food, trade and tourism means that these delicate ecosystems need to be more closely monitored to guarantee their future sustainability. ESA's CoastColour project is helping scientists develop techniques to take full advantage of the unique capabilities of the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) sensor on its Envisat satellite.

With a resolution of 300 m, MERIS provides the sharpest view of coastal waters to date, and includes spectral bands specially designed to characterise the complex mixing of pollutants, suspended sediments and phytoplankton typically found in coastal zones. Stressing the need for information to help manage these ecosystems, more than 40 user organisations have already signed up to the CoastColour project, which is now processing MERIS data with state-of-the-art techniques over 27 high-priority coastal regions selected by users worldwide.

Arnold Dekker from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is working with CoastColour to develop techniques to monitor the health of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. During the wet season large plumes of sediment-laden river water flows into the reef lagoon. Sediments can smother corals and deprive them of the sunlight they need to survive, while river-borne nutrients may influence the frequency of naturally occurring algal blooms.

MERIS data are being used to monitor harmful algal booms along the west coast of South Africa in the Southern Benguela upwelling system. Red tides and algal blooms with extremely high phytoplankton concentrations frequently occur in the region’s bays, threatening fisheries and tourism. Dr Stewart Bernard of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research is developing systems aiming to integrate the satellite data with hydrodynamic models to monitor and predict harmful algal blooms operationally.

…In the Baltic Sea, the sustainable development of seaports requires shipping channels to be dredged every two years. Dredging mixes large amounts of suspended sediments into the water, affecting coastal water quality which is regulated by internationally agreed standards. Dr Liis Sipelgas of the Tallinn University of Technology is working with the Port of Tallinn, which runs four harbours on the Estonian coast, to understand the environmental impact of their dredging operations by mapping sediment plumes….

This Envisat image features the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s Queensland coast. Sediments are visible flowing into the world’s most protected marine area. This image was acquired by Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) on 8 November 2010 at a resolution of 300 meters. Image from ESA

Satellites reveal Russian fires worst in 14 years

European Space Agency: More wildfires have burned around the Russian capital this year than in the last decade and a half, according to sensors aboard ESA’s observation satellites. The forest and peat bog fires ignited this summer amid an unprecedented heat wave of up to 40ºC.

Working like thermometers in the sky, the Along Track Scanning Radiometer and the Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer on ESA’s ERS-2 and Envisat satellites measure thermal-infrared radiation to take the temperature of Earth’s land surface. Flames reach temperatures that are detected by these sensors and confirm the presence of fire.

Data gathered from fires across Russia from July 1996 to the present were used to plot the number of fires occurring monthly. The region near Moscow showed around six times the number of fires this August compared to previous years.

Data from these sensors are compiled to create ESA’s ATSR World Fire Atlas which is available online to users within six hours. The atlas – the longest worldwide fire record available – also provides the time, date, longitude and latitude of the hot spots….

The ESA global detection of hot spots by ERS-2's Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR-2) and Envisat's Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) from July 1996 to August 2010. These twin radiometer sensors work like thermometers in the sky, measuring thermal infrared radiation to take the temperature of Earth's land surfaces. Temperatures exceeding 312º K (38.85 ºC) are classed as burning fires. Credit: ESA

A new European satellite shines at a symposium

European Space Agency: Today, a focus at ESA's Living Planet Symposium is on the innovative SMOS mission, which recently became operational. Early results are proving very encouraging with its first observations due to be released in early July.

ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite was launched in November to gather data on moisture in the surface layers of soil and salt in the surface of the oceans. SMOS will improve our understanding of the water cycle and help advance weather and climate studies. SMOS has completed an intense programme of calibration and commissioning and, in May, it formally began its operational life delivering data.

Although it is still early days, scientists and users are very impressed with the first snapshots of 'brightness temperature' – the microwave radiation emitted from Earth's surface. ESA's Mission Manager, Susanne Mecklenburg said, "We still have some way to go before the full soil moisture and ocean salinity data products are available, but the brightness temperature data we have been working on for the past months clearly demonstrate what this advanced mission has to offer."

The satellite carries an innovative sensor to image brightness temperature. As key observables, these images are used as input to derive global maps of soil moisture and ocean salinity. Given the success of the mission so far, the maps are expected to be available by the autumn.

To test the usefulness of SMOS data for numerical weather prediction, data are also being delivered, within three hours of sensing, to meteorological centres such as the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts….

SMOS is already delivering very encouraging results for ocean salinity. The data, combined from one month (May), show accuracy within 0.45 psu (practical salinity units) when compared with in situ float data, even though the data had not undergone through extensive processing in terms of averaging over space and time. The scientific requirement is 0.1 psu for 200 × 200 km over 10–30 days so there is still scope for improvement. However, even without averaging over space and time as necessary to fulfil this requirement these early results clearly show potential. Credits: ESA - Ifremer, N. Reul

Successful launch for ESA’s CryoSat-2 ice satellite

European Space Agency: Europe's first mission dedicated to studying the Earth’s ice was launched today from Kazakhstan. From its polar orbit, CryoSat-2 will send back data leading to new insights into how ice is responding to climate change and the role it plays in our 'Earth system'.

The CryoSat-2 satellite was launched at 15:57 CEST (13:57 UTC) on a Dnepr rocket provided by the International Space Company Kosmotras from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The signal confirming that it had separated from the launcher came 17 minutes later from the Malindi ground station in Kenya.

CryoSat-2 replaces the original CryoSat satellite that was lost in 2005 owing to a launch failure. The mission objectives, however, remain the same: to measure changes in the thickness of the vast ice sheets that overlie Antarctica and Greenland, as well as variations in the thickness of the relatively thin ice floating in the polar oceans.

"We know from our radar satellites that sea ice extent is diminishing, but there is still an urgent need to understand how the volume of ice is changing," said Volker Liebig, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes. "To make these calculations, scientists also need information on ice thickness, which is exactly what our new CryoSat satellite will provide. We are now very much looking forward to receiving the first data from the mission."

The launch of CryoSat-2 marks a significant achievement for ESA's Earth observation programme and brings to three the number of its Earth Explorer satellites placed in orbit, all having been launched within a little over 12 months. CryoSat-2 follows on from the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission, launched in March 2009, and the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, launched last November….

The CryoSat-2 satellite was launched at 15:57 CEST (13:57 UTC) on a Dnepr rocket provided by the International Space Company Kosmotras from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The signal confirming that it had separated from the launcher came 17 minutes later from the Malindi ground station in Kenya. Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja, 2010

CryoSat-2 installed in launch silo, preparing to monitor earth's ice

European Space Agency: In readiness for launch on 8 April, ESA's CryoSat-2 ice satellite has now joined the rest of the Dnepr rocket in the launch silo at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The 'space head module' was transported from the integration facilities to the underground launch silo this morning. Although it is only 7 km between the two sites, the specialised lorry, nicknamed the 'crocodile', takes well over an hour to complete the journey.

…The launch of CryoSat-2 will mark an important milestone for ESA because it will be the third Earth Explorer mission to be placed in orbit within just over 12 months. CryoSat-2 follows the Gravity field and steady-sate Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission, launched in March 2009, and the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, launched last November.

As with all ESA's Earth Explorers, CryoSat has been developed to address a particular issue identified by the scientific community – in this case, to understand exactly how Earth’s ice fields are changing.

For some years, satellites such as Envisat have been mapping the extent of ice cover. However, in order to understand how climate change is affecting these sensitive regions, there is an urgent need to determine how the thickness of the ice is changing.

In response to this need, CryoSat is Europe's first mission dedicated to monitoring Earth's ice. The advanced observation techniques will provide precise measurements on variations in the thickness of floating marine ice as well as the vast ice sheets that overlie Antarctica and Greenland. This much-awaited information will lead to a better understanding of the relationship between ice and climate change….

ESA’s Earth Explorer CryoSat mission is dedicated to precise monitoring of the changes in the thickness of marine ice floating in the polar oceans and variations in the thickness of the vast ice sheets that overlay Greenland and Antarctica. Credits: ESA - AOES Medialab

Predicting future climate with a networking initiative to support interdisciplinary research

Science Daily: Specialists from various Earth system science disciplines recently gathered to address a major question: what will our environment look like in the future? Of course, possible answers to this question raise even more questions. For instance, if changing climatic conditions were to alter local vegetation, how would this new landscape react to future climatic trends? Answering these questions with certainty would allow us to manage better our natural resources by defining appropriate planning and mitigation actions.

To be able to identify and analyse long-term climatic trends and changes, it is important to have access to near-continuous data of our planet over long periods of time, which is made possible by Earth-observation (EO) satellites.

These data are being increasingly incorporated in various disciplines as tools to evaluate the current situation and to observe changes that have occurred over the last 30 years, since the mainstreaming of EO data. However, in order to provide better model simulations of our climate and the consequences of human behaviour for climate, the various communities in this field -- modellers, ecologists, Earth-observation specialists and researchers -- need to collaborate and merge their research and findings.

The Terrestrial Biosphere in the Earth System (TERRABITES) research network was created to provide a context that facilitates this interdisciplinary cooperation. TERRABITES is funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) programme, financed by the EC and supported by ESA.

Dr Christian Reick, chair of TERRABITES, described the activity as "a cross-disciplinary assessment of our current understanding of the terrestrial biosphere from an Earth system perspective to improve the reliability of future Earth system projections in coupled climate-biosphere simulations."

…Today, more remote sensing data is being acquired, developed and delivered to the global modelling community than at any other time in our history. As a consequence, more and more data are being incorporated into climate models. ESA's Climate Change Initiative, for example, is generating, preserving and providing access to long-term EO data sets of 'Essential Climate Variables' and making them freely available to climate research and modelling communities worldwide….

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission will make global observations of soil moisture over Earth’s landmasses and salinity over the oceans. Variations in soil moisture and ocean salinity are a consequence of the continuous exchange of water between the oceans, the atmosphere and the land – Earth’s water cycle. Image from the European Space Agency

Launch of European climate satellite is delayed

Agence France-Presse: The launch next week of a European satellite designed to monitor the response of icesheets to climate change has been delayed by a technical worry, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Friday. CryoSat-2 had been scheduled to be launched from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan next Thursday.

The operation "has been delayed due to a concern related to the second stage steering engine of the Dnepr launcher," ESA said in a press release. "Although the fuel supply of the second stage engine should be sufficient to get CryoSat into orbit, the fuel reserve is not as large as they would like it to be, according to the Ukrainian company Yuzhnoye, who developed and is responsible for the launcher.

…Kosmotras, the launch provider, will inform ESA of a new launch date shortly, it added. CryoSat-2 is a replica of a first satellite which was lost through a second-stage launch failure in October 2005 that used a modified Russian SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile…..

SA Satellite Cryosat-2 at IABG testbed in Ottobrunn, shot by AndreasSchepers, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license