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Meet the Quality Assurance for EO Team
The Quality Assurance For Earth Observation (also known as QA4EO) Service began its operations on 1 November 2019, providing support to the Data Quality and Algorithms Management Office at ESRIN, within the Sensor Performance, Processing and Algorithm section.
Earth Online Newsletter - 25 October 2024
This issue of the Earth Online Newsletter covers a selection of the latest news and events from ESA
NOAA (POES) AVHRR L1C data products now available
Following the new Heritage Space Programme project on NOAA (POES), AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) level 1C data products are now available to users via the ESA Heritage Missions Dissemination System.
AVHRR L1B/1C Local Area Coverage Imagery
Level-1B This collection is composed of AVHRR L1B products (1.1 km) reprocessed from the NOAA POES and Metop AVHRR sensors data acquired at the University of Dundee and University of Bern ground stations and from the ESA and University of Bern data historical archive. The product format is the NOAA AVHRR Level 1B that combines the AVHRR data from the HRPT stream with ancillary information like Earth location and calibration data which can be applied by the user. Other appended parameters are time codes, quality indicators, solar and satellite angles and telemetry. Two data collections cover the data acquired over Europe and the neighbouring regions in the period of 1 January 1981 to 31 December 2020 in the context of the 1-KM project in the 90s. During the early 1990’s various groups, including the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the Commission of the European Communities (CEC), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) Science Team and ESA concluded that a global land 1 KM AVHRR data set would have been crucial to study and develop algorithms for several land products for the Earth Observing System. USGS, NOAA, ESA and other non-U.S. AVHRR receiving stations endorsed the initiative to collect a global land 1-km multi-temporal AVHRR data set over all land surfaces using NOAA's TIROS "afternoon" polar-orbiting satellite. On 1 April 1992, the project officially began and lasted up to the end of 1999 with the utilisation of 23 stations worldwide plus the NOAA local area coverage (LAC) on-board recorders. The global land 1-km AVHRR dataset is composed of 5 channels, raw AVHRR dataset at 1.1 km resolution from the NOAA-11 and NOAA-14 satellites covering land surfaces, inland water and coastal areas. Global Land 1 km AVHRR Data Set Project HRPT Ground Station Network (as of 1 April 1992) and Acquisition Areas for LAC Recorded Data Level-1C This data collection consists of measurements from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) at 1.1km full Local Area Coverage (LAC) resolution. It is based on the ESA AVHRR Level 1B European Data Set, a curated collection of AVHRR 1km data from 1981 to 2020 covering Europe, selected areas in Africa and the acquired data out-of-Europe in the context of the 1-KM project in the ‘90s (see the Level-1B description for details). The AVHRR LAC measurements were processed by the Remote Sensing Research Group of the University Bern, Switzerland. A landmark based navigation correction software adjusted time and satellite attitude to improve the georeferencing accuracy. The PyGAC software was used to convert the counts to reflectances for the visible and near-infrared channels 1, 2, 3A, and to brightness temperatures for the infrared channels 3B, 4, 5. The infrared calibration uses on-board calibration data and is satellite specific without cross-calibration between satellites. Due to the lack of on-board calibration data for the visible channels, calculated coefficients from the CIMSS PATMOS-X project, version 2017r1, were used for the visible calibration aiming to minimize spectral differences among the various AVHRR sensors. The data format is NetCDF. The calibrated AVHRR data are accompanied by coordinates, satellite and solar angles, additional metadata, and basic quality indicators. The NOAA nomenclature is used for the data record labelling it as a set of AVHRR L1C data. The new products are conveniently formatted in NetCDF. Free standard tools, such as Panoply, can be used to read NetCDF data. Panoply is sourced and updated by external entities. For further details, please consult our Terms and Conditions page.
Hurricane Danielle, August 1998
View satellite images of Hurricane Danielle from August 1998.
Hurricanes Georges and Jeanne, September 1998
View Hurricanes Georges and Jeanne in September 1998 through satellite imagery.
Hurricane Mitch, October 1998
View satellite images depicting Hurricane Mitch as it impacted Central America in October 1998.
ESA's improved Earth system data records: what is in store for the future?
Fundamental Data Records (FDRs) are instrumental in advancing our understanding of Earth systems and for addressing societal challenges effectively. These long-term records contain uncertainty-quantified, calibrated and geo-located multi-instrument/multi-platform satellite sensor data spanning several decades to support climate-related applications.
International collaboration: Summarising ESA’s Third Party Missions
ESA’s Third Party Missions programme consists of more than 50 missions from around the world. Learn more about the Third Party Missions in this video.
Long-term data: Summarising ESA’s Heritage missions
ESA’s Heritage Space Programme preserves data from non-operational missions. Learn more about the Heritage missions in this video.
Space helps monitor Earth’s changing biosphere
Earth’s biosphere is continually changing. Through its pioneering Earth observation missions, ESA is making critical contributions to monitor these changes and their impacts on Earth’s water and carbon cycles.
Heritage Space Programme interactive brochure
Learn about ESA's Heritage Space Programme in this interactive brochure.
Data preservation takes centre stage at Living Planet Symposium
Against the backdrop of the famed Rhine River, world-class scientists and Earth observation data-users are gathered this week in the historical city of Bonn, at the Living Planet Symposium (LPS).
Heritage Missions brochure
This brochure describes ESA's Heritage Space Programme and includes infographics describing some of the missions in the programme.
Timeline to over 40 years of historical satellite missions
ESA's Heritage Space Programme preserves historical data from over 40 years of Earth observation missions.
COP26 fuels interest in satellite data
As COP26 stimulates action to reduce global warming, the essential role of satellite data in understanding and monitoring climate change is apparent.
A stroll through Heritage Missions
At ESA's Earth Observation centre—ESRIN—in Frascati, Italy, there is a place where one can walk back in time, to better understand the history and importance of Heritage Missions and their data.
ESA PDGS Jupyter Notebook
A series of Jupyter Notebooks are available, in order to understand how to exploit the API that provides the data access service for different types of datasets included in the ESA PDGS datacube.
ESA's new DataCube service is now available
ESA is pleased to announce the deployment of a new service, called ESA PDGS-DataCube, enabling multi-temporal and pixel-based access to a subset of the data available in the European Space Agency dissemination services.
ESA’s Earth Observation Catalogue and its services
EO-CAT is the EO Catalogue tool allowing users to search ESA and Third Party Mission collections.