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Banner including blog title "EarthConsole® Stories: Improving Discharge Estimation in Rivers of Mediterranean Countries" and a picture of a river.

EarthConsole® Stories: Improving Discharge Estimation in Rivers of Mediterranean Countries

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EarthConsole® Stories are experiences about how we helped universities, research centres or service developers to leverage Earth Observation data to extract valuable insights for their research, educational or pre-commercial projects.

The Project

The DEMETRAS initiative, part of the broader ESA 4DMED-Hydrology project, aims to deliver more accurate and timely insights into river discharge in Mediterranean countries. By leveraging both satellite altimetry and optical data, the project aims at improving how water flow is measured and monitored in the region.

4DMED-Hydrology focuses on developing an advanced reconstruction of the Mediterranean terrestrial water cycle with high resolution and consistency. It does so using cutting-edge Earth Observation (EO) data from ESA Copernicus missions. The project targets four key river basins — the Po in Italy, Ebro in Spain, Hérault in France, and Medjerda in Tunisia — each selected for their diverse climates, landscapes, land uses, and vulnerability to water-related hazards.

The Need

To improve the accuracy of river discharge estimates, the DEMETRAS research team needed advanced tools for processing Earth Observation data. The team aimed to track water levels along rivers over time by using measurements taken at various locations by different satellites on different orbits. This approach would allow to build reliable time series of how river levels rise and fall, which is essential for understanding water resources.

A key challenge was monitoring water levels in narrow rivers, that are typically difficult to capture using standard satellite measurements. To address this, the research team sought to apply Fully-Focused Synthetic Aperture Radar (FF-SAR) techniques within altimetry missions, which can deliver precise measurements for rivers only a few tens of meters wide.

Why EarthConsole®

To meet these needs, the DEMETRAS team chose the ARESYS Fully-Focused SAR processor, available through the Altimetry Virtual Lab on EarthConsole®. With it, they could process Sentinel-3 data in fully-focused SAR mode across multiple years (2016 to 2022) in Northern Italy and assess the value of this advanced processing technique within the project’s framework.

The processed datasets proved useful to overcome the challenges of our research. Leveraging the ARESYS Fully-Focused SAR processor through EarthConsole® allowed us to conduct bulk processing of a long-term Sentinel-3 dataset spanning 2016–2022, which was managed by the EarthConsole® operators. This relieved the project team from the complexities of processing chain setup and infrastructure management, so we could just focus on the science and analysing the results.

Christian Massari, Academic Researcher, CNR-IRPI – Italy

 

The Impact

The DEMETRAS project is set to make a strong contribution to both the scientific community and stakeholders across the Mediterranean. By delivering more accurate and temporally detailed water level data, it will strengthen the reliability of hydrological models that support water resource planning and flood risk assessment.

Additionally, the project’s results are being shared openly through platforms like Zenodo, ensuring that researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners across the region can benefit. This knowledge sharing will help communities better understand and respond to the water-related challenges they face.

This project has been supported via the ESA Network of Resources initiative.

 

Banner titled "EARTHCONSOLE® Stories" featuring the project "Supporting Coastal Climate Change Research in Kerala." The left side includes a logo and text indicating coordination by NERSC (Nansen Environmental Research Centre). The right side displays a coastal scene with a beachfront town in Kerala.

EarthConsole® Stories: Supporting Coastal Climate Change Research in Kerala

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EarthConsole® Stories are experiences about how we helped universities, research centres or service developers to leverage Earth Observation data to extract valuable insights for their research, educational or pre-commercial projects.

The Project

Coastal regions are on the frontline of climate change, and the coast of Kerala, South India, is no exception. It’s one of the most densely populated shorelines in the region—and one of the most vulnerable.

The Climate Change impact on the marine Coastal ecosystem of Kerala (C3-eKerala) project, funded by The Research Council of Norway, aims to improve the understanding of coastal sea-level variations by integrating multiple Earth Observation data sources. These include tide gauge measurements, radar altimetry data from several nadir-looking satellite altimeters, and high-resolution observations from the new SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite mission.

Picture of the consortium of the eKerala project.Picture of the C3-eKerala project consortium.

By combining traditional and advanced satellite monitoring techniques, the project seeks to evaluate the reliability of satellite-based sea-level observations along the coastal zone of Kerala, before using them to quantify the contribution of winds and ocean warming to local sea level variations in the region.

The Need

This project aims to show how satellite data can effectively monitor changes in sea level along the coast of Kerala, India. To start with, the team needs to compare satellite measurements with data from a sea-level monitoring station in Kochi to check how accurate the satellite readings are. To improve the quality of the data, they also need to test different ways of averaging the satellite results, evaluate the performance of individual satellite missions, and assess how the ability of satellite altimeters to reconstruct sea-level improves when multiple missions are combined.

In the next phase of the project, the team will focus on testing data from a new satellite mission called SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography). They’ll compare it with existing sea-level data to see how well it works. To make sure the comparisons are fair, they need to carefully match up the different types of data.

To understand why sea levels are changing, the project will also look at ocean temperature data from satellites and measurements from floating sensors called Argo floats. This information will go into a model that helps explain how ocean warming and winds affect sea level.

Why EarthConsole®

To support the goals of the C3-eKerala project, the team selected the EarthConsole® P-PRO service, a solution tailored for large-scale satellite data processing. This service was essential for handling the extensive volume of radar altimetry data required for the project, enabling efficient reprocessing of long-term datasets.

The P-PRO service allowed the team to process Sentinel-3, CryoSat-2 and ENVISAT radar altimetry data, spanning from 2012 to 2022, using the ALES+ SAR and ALES retrackers, specialized processors developed by the Technical University of Munich optimized for calculating sea level height. Access to these advanced processors, available via the ESA Altimetry and Heritage Missions Virtual Labs on EarthConsole®, will support the team in generating high-quality data aligned with their need for accurate coastal sea-level monitoring

Picture of Fabio Mangini. Photo: Nansen Center

EarthConsole® provided the tools and flexibility we needed to handle large volumes of data and generate reliable coastal altimetry outputs—specifically tailored for shoreline environments—which were crucial for the first phase of our research.

Fabio Mangini’s photo: Nansen Center.

The Impact

The impact of the C3-eKerala project will be far-reaching. By validating and enhancing satellite-derived sea-level measurements, it lays the groundwork for more reliable monitoring of climate change impacts in coastal areas. The insights from this project are expected to feed into Kerala’s State Action Plan on Climate Change (2023–2030), helping shape policies and response strategies for one of India’s most vulnerable coastal regions.

This project has been supported via the ESA Network of Resources initiative and the Heritage Missions Virtual Lab.

 

Picture representing the Arctic Ocean and Polar Ice Cap

Advancing Polar Research: the conclusion of the OCRE CryoSSARinSAM+ Project

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We are pleased to announce the conclusion of the CryoSSARinSAM+ project, an initiative funded by the European Commission’s OCRE (Open Clouds for Research Environments) program. Led by the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the project set out to produce a single, open-access CryoSat-2 altimetry mission dataset created to become the reference standard for the radar altimetry research community to advance the knowledge of the polar oceans and ice cover, and the impact of climate change on them.

EarthConsole® by Progressive Systems, selected by DTU as service provider, supported the processing of these data and established a repository where researchers can now easily access and download the dataset.

Why Polar Regions Matter

The polar regions have always been a focal point for scientific research, and in today’s world, the need to monitor them has never been more urgent. With the accelerating effects of climate change, the melting of polar sea-ice is one of the most significant amplifiers of global warming with decreasing albedo. This makes tracking changes in the polar oceans essential for understanding long-term climate patterns, the opening of new arctic shipping routes, and the broader impact on the global ecosystem.

For years, different research groups independently processed CryoSat-2 radar altimetry data for the polar oceans, mainly covering the period 2010–2020. While these datasets were valuable for studying changes in these regions, the lack of coordination among the different research groups meant the data was fragmented. This project aimed to provide a more unified approach, also expanding the temporal and geographical coverage of these dataset.

The Expanded Cryosat-2 Dataset

The CryoSSARinSAM+ project aimed to grow and expand this vital dataset to create an Arctic and Antarctic dataset with full coverage from 2010-2024 for the Arctic region (50N-90N) and the Antarctic region (90S-50S).

The project added processing of C2 to create such. By using SARvatore for CryoSat-2 and SARINvatore for CryoSat-2 processors, the project focused on the:

  • the Subarctic region (180.00W, 50.00N, 180.00E, 65.00N) for the winter months from October 2010 to December 2020, as well as full-year data from 2021 up to January 2022, and
  • the Arctic (180.00W, 50.00N, 180.00E, 90.00N) and Antarctic (180.00W, 80.00S, 180.00E, 50.00S) regions from February 2022 up to September 2024.

A powerful dataset for many applications

The new CryoSat-2 dataset generated by the CryoSSARinSAM+ project holds immense potential for a wide range of applications. Some of the key areas of focus include:

  • Sea Level and Circulation: studying trends in sea level rise and ocean circulation in the polar regions.
  • Ice Thickness: estimating winter and summer sea ice thickness in the Arctic and Antarctic Ocean.

The dataset is designed to support a variety of research and monitoring efforts, and contribute to the global effort to understand and mitigate climate change.

Accessing the data: The Altimetry Virtual Lab repository

To download the CryoSat-2 dataset for free and explore its potential applications, simply:

  1. Register or login to EarthConsole®
  2. Request a free membership to the Altimetry Virtual Lab
  3. Navigate to folders 18 (SAR data) and 19 (SARIN data) within this repository.

The Altimetry Virtual Lab, hosted on EarthConsole®, provides processing services for CryoSat-2, Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-6-Michael-Frielich SAR (Syntethic Aperture Radar) altimeters data, such as the SARvatore for CryoSat-2 and SARINvatore for CryoSat-2 processors used for this project and much more. These services support data processing from L1A (FBR) products to SAR/SARin L2 geophysical products.

Beyond processing services, this virtual space also offers tools to facilitate the exchange of scientific knowledge, data, and resources.

Looking Ahead

The conclusion of the CryoSSARinSAM+ project marks a significant milestone in the ongoing exploration of Earth’s polar regions. We are excited to see how this expanded dataset will contribute to the growing body of knowledge about polar oceans, ice dynamics, and sea level change.

At EarthConsole®, we remain committed to supporting innovative research and providing the tools and infrastructure needed to tackle the challenges of climate change.

A Special Opportunity for Researchers

If you’re working on research, educational, or pre-commercial project and are interested in using one of the processing services available through the Altimetry Virtual Lab, you can apply for an ESA Network of Resources (NoR) sponsorship to cover the associated costs.

The NoR is an ESA initiative that provides sponsorship opportunities for users interested in utilizing services from innovative operational platforms and cloud services integrated into this framework, including EarthConsole®.

If ESA approves your sponsorship request, the NoR will provide a voucher of up to €5,000 for non-ESA projects (with no limits for ESA projects), which can be used to cover the cost of the Altimetry Virtual Lab services available through EarthConsole®.

To get started, simply request the desired service through our web app. After submitting your request, we’ll guide you through the process of applying for a sponsorship via the NoR.

OCRE Project by CENTEC: more than a decade of processed CryoSat-2 and Sentinel-3 AB data over coastal zones available on ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab

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We are pleased to share the conclusion of the European Commission OCRE (Open Clouds for Research Environments) [1] financed project led by CENTEC (Centre for Marine Technology and Ocean Engineering) – Instituto Superior Técnico de Lisboa. With our support here at EarthConsole®, this project aimed at evaluating renewable wave energy resources in the coastal zone, employing advanced high-resolution altimetry products.

CENTEC selected EarthConsole® among the providers of the OCRE Earth Observation catalogue to process data over selected coastal zones and an extensive period of 11 years (from January 2011 to December 2022) for CryoSat-2 data and 7 years (from April 2016 to December 2022) for Sentinel-3 data. The processing was conducted using the ESA-ESRIN SARvatore services for CryoSat-2 and Sentinel-3, which allow users to customise the processing from L1a to L2 data products, and include a list a configurable options such as the one used for this project, the enhanced geophysical retrieval algorithm known as the SAMOSA+ model and retracker.

These services are available for both systematic and on-demand processing via the ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab hosted on EarthConsole®.

The ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab is the virtual space that offers customised services to process Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimetry from CryoSat-2, Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich missions, providing a community space for simplified services access and knowledge-sharing.

The areas of interest processed for this project are delineated in the accompanying figure below. Green areas represent processing with both CryoSat-2 and Sentinel-3 data, yellow areas are exclusively related to CryoSat-2 data, and blue areas represent processing with Sentinel-3 data.

To download the datasets, we invite you to log into the Altimery Virtual Lab and visit its datasets repository. A free of charge subscription to the Lab will be required in case you are not yet a Lab Member.

We remind you that you could also have the chance to get the costs of the ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab services covered, by requesting a voucher to the ESA Network of Resources.

[1] OCRE receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 824079

Picture including a measurement of the water level of a river.

EarthConsole® Stories: Monitoring water level changes in the Yangtze River using FF-SAR data

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EarthConsole® Stories are experiences about how we helped universities, research centres or service developers to leverage Earth Observation data to extract valuable insights for their research, educational or pre-commercial projects.

The Project

This study aims at using Sentinel-6 and Sentinel-3 FFSAR data for monitoring changes in water levels within the Yangtze River during the period of January 2019 to March 2023. A key objective of this study is to assess the precision of these datasets in the context of the Yangtze River, accomplished through comprehensive comparisons with both measured water level data and data sourced from alternative satellite monitoring systems.

In addition, the research extends into the topographical characteristics of the Yangtze River, involving a detailed analysis of waveform patterns and potential factors influencing transit points along the river. Furthermore, the study seeks to uncover the root causes behind the fluctuations in the Yangtze River’s water levels, achieving this by cross-referencing data with climate information.

The Need

The requirement at hand revolved around exploring the correlation between temporal and spatial changes in the Yangtze River’s water levels and climate change. Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-6 FFSAR data stood out for their renowned accuracy in monitoring river water level changes. To facilitate this investigation effectively, EarthConsole® offered the FFSAR (Fully Focused Synthetic Aperture Radar) processor for Sentinel-6 developed by Aresys, enabling to delve into this relationship.

Why EarthConsole®

In particular, the P-PRO (Parallel Processing) service within the ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab hosted on EarthConsole® has been selected to gain access to the FF-SAR processor to process Sentinel-6 L1a data on the Yangtze River Basin.

The EarthConsole® P-PRO service proved to be an ideal fit for our project, as it provided the reliable and readily available FF-SAR processor hosted on the platform. Furthermore, this service allowed us to entrust the processing management to EarthConsole® experts, allowing me to concentrate on my research and easily retrieve the results once they were ready.”

Shanmu Ma, Student at the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences – China

This project has been supported via the ESA Network of Resources initiative.

Banner with text saying EarthConsole 2023 wrapped.

EarthConsole® 2023 Wrapped: A Year in Review and Exciting Updates for 2024

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As we near the close of 2023, it is the perfect time to unwrap some of the highlights of this year, which has been nothing short of extraordinary for EarthConsole®.

We’ve been right there, sticking to our promise of helping the scientific community getting value added information from Earth Observation data.

Been at it for years, our dedication is still going strong today and will continue in 2024, bringing in new services and options for data processing.

The ESA Heritage Missions Virtual Lab: Unleashing the Potential of Retired Earth Observation Missions

We have proudly introduced the ESA Heritage Missions Virtual Lab, a new space on EarthConsole® dedicated to harnessing the vast potential of data from non-operational Earth Observation missions.

Even though these missions have retired, their data remain a goldmine for understanding current natural phenomena.

It’s a true honour to take on this responsibility from ESA, and we’re excited to have kicked things off with the On-Demand Small Baseline Subset for ENVISAT service by IREA – CNR to study the temporal evolution of natural or human induced surface deformation.

Right now, it’s the first (and only, for the moment) service in this Lab.

But we’ve got more processors lined up, since renowned research institutions have already manifested their interest in sharing their Heritage Missions data-based algorithms with our users’ community.

These are high on our priority list for integration in 2024, so keep an eye out for those updates!

And here’s the best part—subscribing to the Lab won’t cost you a penny. Once ESA gives the green light, you’ll have a head start with 100 free processing hours.

And if you have an algorithm of your own, let us know via our web app for a chance to be considered for a free integration into the Lab.

EarthConsole® on the ESA Network of Resources: Empowering Earth Observation Research and Educational projects, also in 2024

In 2023, we assisted 20 research and educational projects that received financial support from the ESA Network of Resources, allowing their teams to utilise our services free of charge.

It’s truly gratifying to see so many of our users taking advantage of this opportunity thanks to the scientific merit of their projects.

Looking ahead to 2024, we plan to add new services to the EarthConsole® offering such as the SBAS for Sentinel-1 on demand service based on the algorithm owned by IREA – CNR. We plan to make it available in the first quarter of next year.

And we’re also excited to share that the ESA Network of Resources will continue to offer sponsorship opportunities for research, educational, and pre-commercial projects.

To get your sponsorship request process started, first connect with us through our web app to ask for the desired services. You will find us on the other side, ready to guide you through the entire process, ensuring you get the financial and technical support you need.

ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab: A Growing Community of Altimetry Data Users

The ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab on EarthConsole® continues to thrive, with over 100 members and a repository of processed data exceeding 10 TB.

This year alone, the lab’s services contributed to the publication of 5 scientific papers, adding to the 40+ publications accessible via the open ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab library.

Joining this very active community is free and easy!

And for more details on the Lab’s altimetry SAR services and a glimpse into what lies ahead, you can check out the abstract from the recent poster session held at the AGU Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

OCRE-Funded Projects: Earth Observation Services for Extensive Processing Campaigns

We have proudly served as a service provider for two research projects funded through the OCRE (Open Clouds for Research Environments) initiative. These projects involved extensive data processing using the Altimetry Virtual Lab’s ESA-ESRIN SARvatore services for CryoSat-2 and Sentinel-3 missions.

The CENTEC-led project, focusing on renewable wave energy in the Atlantic Ocean, has recently concluded, and its outcomes are generously shared through the Altimetry Virtual Lab datasets repository.

At the same time, the ongoing project led by the Technical University of Denmark aims to produce an open-access dataset derived from past and future CryoSat-2 altimetry mission acquisitions over the polar ice caps. This ambitious goal here is to turn this dataset into the go-to reference standard for the radar altimetry research community studying polar oceans.

Get ready to welcome WIMEX into the EarthConsole® suite of services widening support for the scientific community

WIMEX (Wave Interaction Models EXploitation) is ready to step into the scene next year. This ESA initiative led by Sapienza University of Rome and contributed by us at Progressive Systems as a partner, proposes a brand-new framework designed to make your life easier by letting you develop, validate and use your forward and inverse electromagnetic wave interaction models through a systematic approach.

The WIMEX prototype is gearing up to make its debut, starting with a focus on forward and inverse models for soil moisture and snow water equivalent, in the second half of 2024.

At the moment we’re on the lookout for Earth Observation innovators like you to join the beta testing crew. If you want to be part of the action and help refine the prototype once it’s ready to roll, let us know.

As we wrap up this remarkable year, we’re already gearing up for an even more Earth Observation data-rich and service-packed 2024 in the world of Earth Sciences!

Thank you for your trust and continued support, which made it all possible.

In the meantime, it’s time to rest and wish you and your loved ones a joyous and Merry Christmas, filled with warmth and happiness.

Banner of the AGU Annual Meeting 2023 taking place in San Francisco from the 11th to the 15th of December 2023.

The ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab on EarthConsole® at the AGU Annual Meeting 2023

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The ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab hosted on EarthConsole® is set to take center stage at the AGU Annual Meeting 2023, offering a unique opportunity for attendees to delve into the world of its altimetry data processing services.

Dr. Jérôme Benveniste, the Lab’s initiator and Senior Advisor at the European Space Agency (ESA), is geared up to personally walk you through the online and on-demand services that make up the Lab’s portfolio during a dedicated poster session.

So if you will be in San Francisco for AGU 2023, mark your calendar for Thursday, 14 December 2023, from 14:10 to 18:30 PST, and head to Poster Hall A-C – South (Exhibition Level, South, MC) to discover:

  • The ESA-ESRIN SARvatore service for CS-2 and S-3 services, which allow users to customize the processing at L1b & L2 (a list of configurable options for, e.g., SAMOSA+/++ and ALES+ SAR retrackers, not yet available in the ESA Ground Segment).
  • The ESA SAMPY (Cryo-TEMPO project) for CryoSat-2 to append the SAMOSA+ retracker output to official CryoSat-2 Level-2 GOP products.
  • The TUDaBo SAR-RDSAR (TU Darmstadt–U Bonn SAR-Reduced SAR) for CS-2 and S-3. It allows users to generate reduced SAR, unfocused SAR & LRMC data, with configurable L1b & L2 processing options and retrackers (BMLE3, SINC2, TALES, SINCS, SINCS OV).
  • The TU München ALES+ SAR for CS-2 and S-3. It allows users to process official L1b data and produces L2 products by applying the empirical ALES+ SAR subwaveform retracker, including a dedicated Sea State Bias solution.
  • The Aresys Fully-Focused SAR for CS-2 & S-3, to produce L1b products with configurable options and appending the ALES+ FFSAR output.

And here’s the best part – if you’re not part of the Lab’s 100+users community, you can join for free.

We look forward to welcoming you to the ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab!

Banner showing the title and date of the webinar (20 October 2023)

Join the webinar on EarthConsole® organized by the ESA Network of Resources

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If you are wondering where to start with EarthConsole® or how to broaden your usage of the platform, we are here to help.

Join us at this EarthConsole® webinar on October 20th at 1:00 p.m. CEST, part of the ESA Network of Resources (NoR) Webinar Series.

Join and meet us

You can expect to:

  1. Gain insights on EarthConsole® services to:
    • develop, validate and run your algorithms
    • integrate your algorithm into a scalable environment
    • perform processing campaigns on large datasets
    • run integrated applications on your own
  2. Learn from real use cases.
  3. Get a walkthrough the ESA Virtual Labs hosted on EarthConsole®, designed for specific Earth Observation communities like Altimetry and Heritage Missions data users.
  4. Explore how to get your project sponsored by the ESA NoR.

No matter your background or level of Earth Observation expertise, the presentation has been designed with everybody in mind.

Don’t forget, this webinar is free. We hope to see you there!

Banner including a picture of swell waves

EarthConsole® Stories: Sentinel-6 potential of swell wave detection using FF-SAR data

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EarthConsole® Stories are experiences about how we helped universities, research centres or service developers to leverage earth observation data to extract valuable insights for their research, educational or pre-commercial projects.

The Project

In the context of the Space Flight MSc program at the faculty of Aerospace Engineering of the Delft University of Technology, this thesis project delved into the capabilities of the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, the latest satellite altimetry mission, launched in November 2020 as part of the Copernicus programme.

The project aimed to compare two types of data, Level 1b Sentinel-6 Fully Focused Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) RAW and RMC data, to evaluate their differences in monitoring swell waves.

The project focused on the Channel Islands of California, where the presence of swells is dominant and especially evident in the winter period.

The Need

Recent research has shown that the performance of the RMC mode in unfocused SAR meets expectations. However, when it comes to fully focused SAR applications, there was still a need to evaluate the differences with RAW data.

That’s where EarthConsole® came into play. EarthConsole®’s Altimetry Virtual Lab provides the FF-SAR processor for Sentinel-6 developed by Aresys. This processor handles the entire journey of Sentinel-6 SAR data, starting from the raw FBR data and transforming it into FF-SAR Level1b products. This processor became indispensable since it provided FFSAR data required for extracting swell spectra information.

Why EarthConsole®

The research team chose to utilize the EarthConsole® P-PRO (parallel processing) service within the EarthConsole® Altimetry Virtual Lab to access the FFSAR (Fully Focused Synthetic Aperture Radar) for Sentinel-6.

In the course of the thesis project, creating an in-house FFSAR processor was simply beyond the project’s scope and the time constraints allocated for it. Consequently, we made the decision to leverage an external service, a choice that brought about several notable advantages. It afforded me access to a well-tested software solution and allowed me to fine-tune processing parameters to align with my specific requirements. Most notably, the substantial reduction in processing time, compared to running it on a local machine, emerged as a pivotal factor ensuring the project’s ultimate success.

The project impact

This performance analysis will be of great help to members of the scientific community who wish to use RAW data to analyze swells as it will highlight differences between RMC and RAW datasets thereby guiding a critical interpretation of the Sentinel-6 mission data.

 

This project has been supported via the ESA Network of Resources initiative.

Banner including a picture of coastal erosion

EarthConsole® Stories: HYDROCOASTAL project enhancing the understanding of river discharge-coastal sea levels interactions

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EarthConsole® Stories are experiences about how we helped universities, research centres or service developers to leverage earth observation data to extract valuable insights for their research, educational or pre-commercial projects.

The Project

With funding from the European Space Agency (ESA), the Hydrocoastal project aims at making the most of SAR and SARin altimeter measurements in coastal areas and inland waters. To accomplish this goal, the project seeks to explore and implement novel methodologies for processing SAR and SARin data obtained from CryoSat-2, as well as SAR altimeter data gathered from Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B satellites.

An important focus of the project is to enhance the comprehension of the relationship between river discharge and coastal sea levels. To facilitate this understanding, the research team developed, implemented, and assessed new SAR and SARIn processing algorithms. From the results of this evaluation a processing scheme has been implemented to generate global coastal zone and river discharge data sets. The potential impact and benefits of these datasets will then be investigated through a series of impact assessment case studies.

Furthermore, as part of promoting collaboration and knowledge sharing, all generated datasets will be made available upon request to external researchers, fostering further exploration and analysis in related fields.

The Need

The Hydrocoastal project has developed a delay-doppler processor in Python. This processor can take Sentinel-3 SRAL L1A and Cryosat-2 FBR data and turn it into L1B data in a customised netCDF format. These data products were additionally extended to include data from Sentinel-3 and Cryosat-2 L2 files.

In the earlier phase of the project, the team developed different retracking tools that could work with these products. These tools were tested and compared with the goal of selecting a single retracking solution. Only the selected tool was to be applied to the data products created by the Python delay-doppler processor.

At this point the research team needed a suitable solution to perform these processing steps and generate the global coastal zone and river discharge datasets and resorted to GBOX (Integrated Algorithm and Execution Environment) available via the ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab hosted on EarthConsole®.

Why EarthConsole®

The Team resorted to EarthConsole® G-BOX as it offered the necessary computing resources to efficiently deliver the global validated coastal zone datasets and river discharge datasets.

The initial phase of the project, involving the definition of products and assessment of various algorithms, has been successfully completed internally. For the next phase involving the generation of the datasets, we selected EarthConsole® G-BOX for its potential to significantly expedite our data processing timeline compared to our in-house facilities. By leveraging G-BOX, we eliminated the lengthy process of downloading input data. This enabled us to deliver the global datasets in a much shorter time, meeting our project goals effectively.

The project impact

The ESA Hydrocoastal project has the ambition to utilize the global datasets to foster more effective management strategies for various coastal regions. These areas have common features such as flooding and erosion, sedimentation, the importance of accurate high resolution local modelling, the vulnerability of coastal habitats, the connection between river discharge and coastal sea levels.

Simultaneously, the project focuses on investigating the potential for operational hydrological forecasting in inland water systems, assessing the influence of lake size and riverbank configuration on water level retrieval accuracy, quantifying the freshwater inflow into the seas under examination, and developing a comprehensive global water level climatology.

This project has been supported via the ESA Network of Resources initiative.