ESA - Observing the Earth - Water cycle conference makes a big splash

About Observing the Earth

How does Earth Observation work?How to get Earth observation data Integrating Earth Observation in your job Earth Observation users speak

EO programmes

The Living Planet GMES

ESA's Earth Observing missions

Envisat overview ERS overview Earth Explorers overview Sentinels overview MSG overview MetOp overview Proba-1 overview Third Party Missions overview

Opportunities with us

Education & training International cooperation Milestones & announcements EO conferences organised by ESA

Multimedia

Image Gallery Video Gallery Online resources RSS feeds

Services

Calendar Subscribe

Article Images

Water cycle conference makes a big splash

21 December 2009

Back to article

Download:

HI-RES MPG (Size: 3 028 kb)

Earth's water cycle. Powered by the Sun, Earth's finite water supply is constantly circulated between the oceans, the atmosphere and the land. This circulation and conservation of Earth's water is a crucial component of our weather and climate.

Credits: ESA - AOES Medialab

Back to article

Download:

HI-RES JPEG (Size: 730 kb)

The Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) model of daily evapotranspiration estimates based on data from the Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) on ESA's Envisat satellite. The AATSR images were acquired for 17 July 2004 during the SPARC-2004 (SPECTRA Barrax Campaign-2004) campaign.

Credits: Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), the Netherlands

Back to article

Download:

HI-RES PNG (Size: 1209 kb)

This image is the first data sent to Earth by the MIRAS instrument on ESA's SMOS satellite, launched on 2 November 2009. It was acquired as part of the initial functional verification test since the instrument was switched on on 17 November. The image depicts non-calibrated brightness temperature values colour coded from blue (low) to red (high). Although the image content cannot be interpreted at this time, it proves that the instrument is in good shape and the data reception and processing chain are working.

Credits: ESA

Back to article

Download:

HI-RES QT (Size: 13 500 kb)

HI-RES WM (Size: 14 300 kb)

HI-RES MP4 (Size: 14 800 kb)

Surface soil moisture data collected by the ASCAT scatterometer onboard MetOp, between 2-4 July 2007. Brown and blue colours represent dry and wet conditions, respectively. For grey areas, soil moisure retrieval is either meaningless or deemed not possible.

Credits: TU Wien - IPF

Back to article

Download:

HI-RES JPEG (Size: 766 kb)

Soil moisture time series for a location in the Sahel Desert close to the border of Cameroon and Nigeria. The time series is based on more than 30 years of data from four passive (SMMR, SMM/I, TRMM, AMSR-E) and two active (ERS, ASCAT) microwave satellite sensors.

Credits: TU Wien - Vrjge University of Amsterdam