The European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2024 brings together geoscientists from all over the world, aiming to provide a forum where scientists and early career researchers can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts, in all fields of geoscience. 

Taking place from 14–19 April 2024, in Vienna, Austria, EGU is set to bring together thousands of experts from a wide range of disciplines to discuss the latest advances in Earth, planetary and space science.

As part of its contributions to the event, ESA is participating in several disciplinary sessions in which researchers will demonstrate how science enabled by the agency’s Earth observation activities is improving understanding of the planet and its processes.

New digital technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning are leading to a major transformation in Earth observation, opening up a wealth of opportunities for science and research, and business alike.

Among the abundance of topics and sessions being covered, the following are just some main ones:

• Ice sheet and climate interaction  
• Advances in sea-ice modelling
• Remote sensing of soil moisture
• The state of the Cryosphere
• Understanding East and West Antarctica’s responses to climate change
• Aerosol emissions and properties
• Advances in Flood Risk Monitoring
• A focus on ESA’s Earth Explorer missions
• Considerations of Aeolus mission related to Climate Change Education
• A focus on the upcoming EarthCARE mission and much more

Research activities and projects based on data from ESA’s Earth Explorers and Heritage Missions, or from satellites that are part of ESA’s Earthnet Programme will also be highlighted at the conference.

ESA’s Earth Explorer CryoSat mission will be featured across several sessions, with over 40 contributions either as oral or poster presentations. The main contribution can be found in “Observing the Cryosphere: Advances in remote and close-range sensing – CR5.3” in “Rapid changes in sea ice: processes and implications – CR3.2” and finally in “Hydrology of ice sheets, ice shelves and glacier CR2.4” sessions.

While ESA’s renowned wind mission, Aeolus, will contribute with more than a dozen papers as oral and poster presentations. The main highlights can be found in “The Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) ready for Launch – AS1.15” in “Advancing understanding of the circulation-coupling and Lagrangian evolution of clouds – AS1.7” and in “Teaching Climate Change at School – EOS5.2”.

Swarm will contribute with more than 20 papers as oral and poster presentations. The main contributions can be found in “Nowcasting, forecasting, operational monitoring and post-event analysis of the space weather and space climate in the Sun-Earth system – ST4.4”, “The transformative role of LEO satellites for studying the geospace dynamics – ST4.9”, “Ionosphere – upper atmosphere physics with ground-based instrumentation – ST3.1”, “Advances in gravity and magnetic field studies and natural resources exploration – EMRP 2.2” sessions.

The Editorial Services team for Earth Online, ESA’s technical website for scientists, researchers and data users, is hosting a presentation on the Power of Content at the ESA booth on Tuesday, 16 April at 10:30 AM CEST.