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Paul Fisher & Paolo Cipollini

ESA’s Earth Observation missions and climate: an update

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Agenda

• Introduction to ESA

• ESA Earth Observation missions: review and update

• ESA Climate Change Initiative

• Climate Change Initiative: scientific highlights

• Engaging the public, educators and students

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ESA Directorates

Director General

Jan Wörner

Science

Guenther Hasinger

Launchers

Daniel

Neuenschwander

Human Spaceflight

& Robotic

Exploration

David Parker

Earth Observation

Josef

Aschbacher

Telecom & Integrated

Applications

Magali Vaissière

Galileo &

Navigation-related

Activities

Paul Verhoef

Technical & Quality

Management

Franco Ongaro

Industry, Procurement

& Legal Services

Eric Morel

De Westgaver

Internal Services

Jean Max Puech

Operations

Rolf Densing

Launchers Navigation

Telecoms Earth ObservationHuman spaceflight & robotics

Space scienceSpace science

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Taking the Pulse of our Planet

ESA Vision for EO

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European Citizens’ Priorities in Space

“In the eyes of Europeans, the primary area of progression for space

activities would be to foster a better understanding of what is

happening on Earth, particularly regarding the climate”

Q: In the future, do you believe that priority should be given or not to space

activities that allow us to ... ?

TOP 5 Priorities:

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Satellites25 under development

15 in operation

ESA-Developed Earth Observation Missions

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Aeolus – ESA’s wind mapping mission

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Aeolus mission status

The strong westerly wind in the jet stream, with speeds of more than 200km/h, is clearly visible at the altitude of c10km. On this day, very strong winds extended from the jet stream all the way down to the surface and caused problems for traffic and construction.

Since Aeolus measures wind in the cloud-free atmosphere and within thin clouds and top of thick clouds, the measurements here are those surrounding Cyclone Idai. Here strong easterly winds north of the hurricane (in red on the left), with wind speeds of up to 150km/h. In the upper right corner (altitude 22-25km), the tropical stratospheric easterly jet can be seen in red and lower down on the right (altitude 10-16km) the sub tropical westerly jet in the southern hemisphere is visible in blue.

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Sentinel-5 PrecursorCOPERNICUS ATMOSPHERE MISSION IN POLAR ORBIT

The TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) is the payload of the S5P mission and was jointly developed by The

Netherlands and ESA. Polar synchronous orbit at a height of about 820 km. Global coverage within 1 day (swath of 2600

km). Ground-pixel spatial resolution of 7 x 3.5 km. Open data access following the Copernicus Data Policy.

Copernicus Sentinel-5P – atmospheric monitoring mission

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Sentinel-5 Precursor Products

• Methane (CH4)

• Tropospheric Ozone Column (trop. O3)

• Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)

• Formaldehyde (OCHO)

• Total Columns of Ozone (O3)

• Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2)

• Carbon Monoxide (CO)

• Cloud information

• Aerosol information

• Radiances/Irradiances

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Sentinel-5P results

Copyright: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017-2019) / processed by SRON and KNMI

Transboundary Carbon Monoxide Total Ozone columns

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Big Data Revolution

ESA EO Data ArchivePetabyte

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

110

2000 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024 2026

Sentinel missions operated by ESA

Earth Explorer missions

Heritage missions

Third Party & Contributing Missions

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Essential Climate Variables (ECVs)

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• Established 2010• €160M• 450 researchers• 13 ECVs transferred

to C3S

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ECVs under development by ESA CCI

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Ç`

Exploiting the EO satellite archive

35+ years of satellite data

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Climate Change Initiative

Global Mean Sea Level Budget9,000 Gt glacier ice loss since 1961

Land Cover & Sea Surface Temperature time series Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (ppm)

Antarctic Ice Sheet Contribution to Global Sea Level

Sea Ice Concentration

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CCI achievements to date

178

100+

22

133 4.2

64028

15

13

450

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Stories of Change

from the CCI Datasets

Photo by James Wheeler from Pexels

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Ice Sheets

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Antarctica – ice loss accelerating

”There has been a step

increase in ice losses from Antarctica during the past decade.

A Shepherd (University of Leeds & Antarctica_cci Science Leader)

219 billion tonnes of ice

loss per year 2012 -2017 - a three-fold increase from the preceding 10 years.

7.6mm of global mean sea level

since 1992 due to Antarctic ice loss

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A quarter of Antarctica is unstable

Shepherd et al GRL, 2019

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Glaciers

ASTER image: USGS/JAXA

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1 km

N

Patagonia

Landsat data: USGS

1998

2014

to

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Landsat data: USGS

1985

2000

2010

2016

Patagonia

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Rankl et al. (2014)

Karakoram: Multi-year averages

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Paul et al. (2017)

Following the surge of Hispar Glacier

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Zermatt

Glaciers_cci

Switzerland 1999

2013

to

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Brun et al. (2017)

High

Mountain

Asia

2000

2016

to

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Zemp et al. (2019)

1961

2016

toTotal

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Sea Level

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ESA Sea Level CCI / LEGOS / CLS

3.1 mm/yr

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ESA SST CCI /C. Merchant

Sea surface temperature

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ESA SST CCI /C. Merchant

Rising temperature

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ESA SST CCI /C. Merchant

Impacts / Coral Bleaching

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Impacts / Coral BleachingSentinel-2 captures coral bleaching

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©RH(2019)

Clouds

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Albert Bierstadt - Storm Clouds (~1880)

Cloud Climatology from ESA CCIWhat is the global distribution and average?

Global Average:

64 % ± 3 %

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Cloud Climatology from ESA CCIWhat about low, middle, and high clouds?

Albert Bierstadt - Storm Clouds (~1880)

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Fire

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Knowledge Exchange – policy, public & education

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cci.esa.int

@esaclimate