EarthConsole® Stories: Supporting Coastal Climate Change Research in Kerala

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.

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 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.

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.

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

Fabio Mangini’s photo: Nansen Center.

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.