Latest Global Monitoring for Environment and Security Stories

Devastating around a third of the country, it is estimated that the floods in Pakistan have affected up to 20 million people. As part of the effort to support humanitarian relief, satellite data are being used to generate essential maps of the flooded areas.Pakistan's floods are arguably the worst in living memory, leaving many hundreds dead and millions homeless or marooned as villages and infrastructure have washed away. The fear now is that more will die from water-borne diseases. The...

An award-winning new website is using realtime imagery from ESA's Envisat satellite to provide a wealth of information on sea ice to aid safe passage through the treacherous waters of the Antarctic.Although remote, the Southern Ocean is an increasingly busy route for sea traffic. These seas are used more and more to conduct scientific research, transport freight, harvest fertile fishing grounds and carry tourists to experience one of Earth's last wildernesses. However, ever-changing pack ice...

More than 1200 scientists from around the world have gathered in Bergen, Norway, for ESA's week-long Living Planet Symposium to present their latest findings on Earth's environment and climate using data from observation satellites.Addressing the participants, the Norwegian Minister of Trade and Industry Trond Giske underscored the importance of Earth observation saying that it is a priority for the Norwegian government and that space should be useful for society.Deputy Mayor Trude Drevland...

The Council of the European Space Agency today announced that Jean-Jacques Dordain will continue as the Director General of ESA for a further period of four years. Mr Dordain has served as Director General of ESA since 2003. This third mandate extends his term to June 2015.Mr Dordain's tenure at ESA includes many important European space milestones. At the end of 2003 he signed the first Framework Agreement between ESA and the European Community, starting a new relationship that continues to...

As Arctic sea-ice recedes inexorably towards another record summer minimum, scientists have highlighted the exceptional contribution that satellites have made to the International Polar Year and charting the effects of climate change.Celebrating the remarkable accomplishments of the International Polar Year (IPY), the IPY Oslo Science Conference last week drew together 2400 researchers, educators and members of northern communities "“ making it the biggest polar science meeting ever...

The Berlin Air and Space Show, ILA, one of the world's largest aerospace trade shows, opens next week. Organized every two years by the German Aerospace Industries Association (BDLI), it will be taking place at Berlin-Schönefeld Airport on June 8-13.ESA, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and the BDLI have jointly designed a special pavilion, "˜Space for Earth', in the International Space Village (Hall 9), in which visitors can learn more about European space programs and German national...

As fears grow that the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico could soon catch the oil slick and drag it south towards coral reefs in the Florida Keys, scientists are monitoring the situation closely with ESA's Envisat radar data. By combining surface roughness and current flow information with Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) data of the spill, SAR image analysts are able to detect the direction in which the spill boundaries can drift.In these two ASAR images for April 29 and...

Originally designed to monitor Earth for just three years, ESA's veteran ERS-2 satellite is still in orbit and going strong after 15 years of delivering essential data to improve our understanding of Earth and climate change. ERS-2 was launched on 21 April 1995 to follow on from the first European Remote-Sensing mission, ERS-1, which had been in orbit since 1991. At the time, these two satellites were the most sophisticated European Earth observation spacecraft ever developed, delivering...

Despite the hardest winter in the UK for the last 30 years, and the heavy snow-falls of the last few days in Scotland, there are signs from space that spring is finally on its way.Data from Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) are being used to generate daily maps that show exactly how plants are responding to the coming season, marking a significant improvement for 'phenology'.Phenology is the study of how the life-cycles of plants are closely tuned to seasonal change.By...

ESA has awarded a contract worth €105 million to Astrium to build the second Sentinel-2 satellite. Once both are operational, this pair of satellites will provide global coverage every five days, delivering high-resolution optical imagery for GMES land and emergency services.Marking another milestone in Europe's Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative, this contract follows hot on the heels of the agreement between ESA and Thales Alenia Space to build the...