Tag: Sentinel

Monitoring ice shelves in Antarctica

Brunt Ice Shelf

Source: Ice Shelves : Brunt

Two large cracks, Chasm 1 and the ‘Halloween Crack’, are growing on the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica and when they meet, a large iceberg around 3 times the size of Leeds (1,594 km2) will break off.

Ice Speed on the Brunt Ice Shelf

Ice Shelf Calving

Source: Ice Shelves : Brunt

For inquiries of a scientific nature, please contact Dr. Anna Hogg, for inquiries related to web site operations please contact: Alan Muir at a.muir@ucl.ac.uk.

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Copernicus Sentinel 5P

Copernicus Sentinel 5P

Sentinel 5P March 01 to 05, 2019 are mapped using R software. Darker red areas are high levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) as shown over East of China, a highly industrialized populated area. Sentinel-5P have spatial resolution of 7 x 3.5 KM.

The Copernicus Sentinel-5P (S5P) data is available (here) for download since July 2018 to monitor air quality and changes in ozone over Antarctica. The TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) is the single sensor on board of the S5P satellite. The S5P is the first of the atmospheric composition Sentinels (operational satellite missions supporting the Copernicus programme), launched in 2017, for a nominal lifetime of 7 years. S5P, is a gap-filler and a preparatory programme covering products and applications for Sentinel-5. The S5P mission will fill the gap between the end of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and SCIAMACHY exploitation and the Sentinel-5 mission (credit: ESA).

This high spatial resolution data is useful for air pollution to locate origin of key pollutants (trace gases such as sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere) and finding pollution hotspots. Measurements of atmospheric ozone from the Copernicus S5P satellite are now being used in daily forecasts of air quality. 

List of Sentinel-5P level 2 products are show in the table (credit: KNMI):

European Space Agency (ESA) – Sentinel-5P (credit ESA)

Data Download

The S5P data in “pre ops”  phase can be downloaded from the scihub https://scihub.copernicus.eu/ . I downloaded a level 2 NO2 file in netCDF format (.nc files).

search results are shown

Data visualization

The downloaded netcdf file first imported into “Panoply netCDF Visualization Software”

Click to access Panoply_Manual.pdf

The browser shows contents (variables) of the netcdf file.

The user can easily create a line plot.

2D plot with several map projections options

Copyright/Credit contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by DLR/BIRA

One added value of Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) ozone products compared to satellite total column retrievals is that CAMS provides 3D global fields. This allows structures like the Antrctic ozone hole to be viewed in a different way. This animation shows a cross section of the ozone layer (in partial pressure) over the South Pole from 1 July to 25 November 2018 and illustrates the development and recovery of the ozone hole.

Copyright/Credit Processed by CAMS/ECMWF

The reduction of ozone concentrations in the stratosphere and the formation of the ozone hole each year are caused by complex meteorological and chemical processes. Changes in the ozone between 7 July and 22 November 2018 are displayed here as a 3D rendered animation.

Copyright/Credit processed by CAMS/ECMWF

 

More Information available:

  • Tropomi.eu (KNMI R&D Satellite Observations here )
  • TROPOMI (the Netherlands here)
  • European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-5 Precursor / TROPOMI here
  • ESA Sentinel-5 Precursor launch campaign blog here
  • Sentinel-5 Precursor Level-2 Product User manual here
  • Research articles/presentations: link1, link2, link3, link4,

Related tweets:

— ESA EarthObservation (@ESA_EO) June 5, 2019

We’re in Milan for #LPS19 and the latest science from Europe’s Sentinel satellites… like the new #Sentinel5P, which returns daily views of pollution. It shows nitrogen dioxide, mostly from fossil-fuel burning. This is data averaged for March 2019. pic.twitter.com/H2xXJZaNFX

— Jonathan Amos (@BBCAmos) May 13, 2019

Flood Monitoring from Space – ESA’s Sentinel-1

Karachi, the largest city of Pakistan received heavy monsoon rain August 30, 2017. The flood in Karachi due to heavy rains is the continuation of the similar monsoon related flooding crisis in the South East Asia region (India, Bangladesh etc.).The Flood map below is derived (subset of Karachi city ) from European Space Agency (ESA)’s Copernicus Program SENTINEL-1 Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR) image acquired on September 01, 2017. The green color in the map shows the flooded region.

 

 

The total rainfall derived from satellite data (GPM IMERG) for Karachi from August 29-31, 2017 is shown in Figure below:

 

 

The evolution of the Sentinel Collaborative Ground Segment – News – Sentinel Online

The evolution of the Sentinel Collaborative Ground Segment

12 January 2017

ESA and its Member States created the Sentinel Collaborative Ground Segment (CollGS) to further enhance the Sentinel missions exploitation in various areas. Today, the cooperation is also open to all European countries and Copernicus Participating States.

Besides the challenging task of building and launching a satellite, a key indicator of the success of an Earth observation mission relies on ensuring that the data gathered are of good quality and made easily available to users.

These functions are all ensured by the Copernicus Space Component (CSC) Ground Segment.

The Sentinel Collaborative Ground Segment complements the Copernicus Ground Segment. This entails additional elements for specialised solutions in different technological areas, such as data acquisition, complementary production and dissemination.

But what does the CollGS do, exactly?

  • National entities can build-up their own mirror data archive and base operational services on Sentinel data. Participating countries then redistribute the Sentinel data and/or value added products from their “mirror sites”, to institutional, commercial and science users.
  • Many mirror sites in place are now also adding hosted processing to their services.
  • If technically required to meet data timeliness obligations, local ground stations are configured to listen-in as Sentinel data is downlinked to core ground stations. This allows for quasi-real time product generation as, for instance, in supporting marine surveillance activities in the Baltic Sea.
  • Furthermore, in the frame of the CollGS, national initiatives carry out the development of innovative tools and applications.

Canada, which is an associate ESA Member State, operates extremely important land and maritime monitoring activities, with C-CORE and other organisations. Having established a CollGS agreement, they can access the Sentinel products via a data hub operated by ESA and dedicated to collaborative partners.

Shahid Khurshid, Physical Scientist at Meteorological Service of Canada, and Matt Arkett, Acting Manager of Earth Observation and Geomatics, at Environment and Climate Change Canada, said: “Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Operational National SAR Winds (NSW) system provides near real-time delivery of marine wind measurements derived from spaceborne synthetic aperture Radars (SAR) to support marine forecasters & other applications.

“The programme has been operational since 2013, ingesting SAR data from the RADARSAT-1 and RADARSAT-2 missions. The NSW system began to generate operational surface wind maps using Sentinel-1A data in April 2016 and Sentinel-1B in September 2016.
“Access to Sentinel-1 data has significantly increased the temporal and spatial frequency of marine wind speed information being delivered to our operational marine forecasters.

Continue reading The evolution of the Sentinel Collaborative Ground Segment – News – Sentinel Online