Copernicus: Sentinel-1
Copernicus: Sentinel-1 — The SAR Imaging Constellation for Land and Ocean Services Spacecraft Launch Mission Status Sensor Complement Ground Segment References Sentinel-1 is the European Radar Observatory, representing the first new space component of the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) satellite family, designed and developed by ESA and funded by the EC (European Commission). The Copernicus missions (Sentinel-1, -2, and -3) represent the EU contribution to GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems). Sentinel-1 is composed of a constellation of two satellites, Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B, sharing the same orbital plane with a 180° orbital phasing difference. The mission provides an independent operational capability for continuous radar mapping of the Earth with enhanced revisit frequency, coverage, timeliness and reliability for operational services and applications requiring long time series.
Table 1: Copernicus is the new name of the former GMES program 1) The overall objective of the Sentinel-1 mission is to provide continuity of C-band SAR operational applications and services in Europe. Special emphasis is placed on services identified in ESA's GSE (GMES Service Element) program. Additional inputs come from on-going GMES projects funded by ESA, the EU, and ESA/EU member states. The Sentinel-1 mission is expected to enable the development of new applications and meet the evolving needs of GMES, such as in the area of climate change and associated monitoring. 2) 3) 4) The Sentinel-1 mission represents a completely new approach to SAR mission design by ESA in direct response to the operational needs for SAR data expressed under the EU-ESA GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) program. The mission ensures continuity of C-band SAR data to applications and builds on ESA's heritage and experience with the ERS and Envisat SAR instruments, notably in maintaining key instrument characteristics such as stability and accurate well-calibrated data products. The key mission parameters are revisit time, coverage, timeliness combined with frequency band, polarization, resolution and other image quality parameters. Short revisit time demands for an appropriate orbit selection and large swath widths. The baseline mission concept under development is a two-satellite constellation, with four nominal operational modes on each spacecraft designed for maximum compliance with user requirements. 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) • Orbit: Sun-synchronous near-polar orbit, repeat cycle of 12 days, cycle length of 175 days • Operational modes: - Stripmap mode (SM): 80 km swath, 5 m x 5 m resolution, single-look - Interferometric Wide Swath mode (IWS): 240 km swath, 5 m x 20 m resolution, single-look - Extra Wide Swath mode (EWS): 400 km swath, single-look - Interferometric Wide Swath mode (IWS): 240 km swath, 25 m x 80 m resolution, 3-looks - Wave mode (WM): 20 km x 20 km, 20 m x 5 m resolution, single-look • Polarization: Dual polarization for all modes VV+VH or HH+HV • Operations: - Consistent, reliable and conflict free mission operations - Near real-time delivery of data within 3 hours (worst case) with 1 hour as goal - Data delivery from archive within 24 hours • Sensitivity: NESZ (Noise Equivalent Sigma Zero), σo = -25 dB • Radiometry: - Stability = 0.5 dB - Accuracy = 1.0 dB • Ambiguity ratio: DTAR (Distributed Target Ambiguity Ratio) = -25 dB In April 2007, ESA selected TAS-I (Thales Alenia Space Italia) as prime contractor for the Sentinel-1 spacecraft (overall satellite design & integration at system and subsystem level, including the design of the SAR antenna's transmit/receive modules). ESA awarded the contract to TAS-I on June 18, 2007 at the Paris International Air Show. EADS Astrium GmbH of Friedrichshafen, was in turn awarded a contract by TAS-I to build the radar imaging payload for Sentinel-1, including the central radar electronics subsystem developed by Astrium UK. The objective of Sentinel-1 is to assure C-band SAR data continuity for the user community currently provided by Envisat and ERS-2. 11) Three priorities (fast-track services) for the mission have been identified by user consultation working groups of the European Union: Marine Core Services, Land Monitoring and Emergency Services. These cover applications such as: 12) • Monitoring sea ice zones and the arctic environment • Surveillance of marine environment • Monitoring land surface motion risks • Mapping of land surfaces: forest, water and soil, agriculture • Mapping in support of humanitarian aid in crisis situations. Unlike its more experimental predecessors ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat that supply data on a best effort basis, operational satellites like Sentinel-1 are required to satisfy user requirements and to supply information in a reliable fashion with the data provider accepting legal responsibility for the delivery of information. In March 2010, ESA and TAS-I signed a contract to build the second Sentinel-1 (Sentinel-1B) and Sentinel-3 (Sentinel-3B) satellites, marking another significant step in the Copernicus program. 13) As part of the Copernicus space component, the Sentinel-1 (S1) mission is implemented through a constellation of two satellites (A and B units) each carrying an imaging C-band SAR instrument (5.405 GHz) providing data continuity of ERS and Envisat SAR types of mission. Each Sentinel-1 satellite is designed for an operations lifetime of 7 years with consumables for 12 years. The S-1 satellites will fly in a near polar, sun-synchronized (dawn-dusk) orbit at 693 km altitude. 14) The Sentinel-1 mission, including both S-1A and S-1B satellites, is specifically designed to acquire systematically and provide routinely data and information products to Copernicus Ocean, Land and Emergency as well as to national user services. These services focus on operational applications such as the observation of the marine environment, including oil spill detection and Arctic/Antarctic sea-ice monitoring, the surveillance of maritime transport zones (e.g. European and North Atlantic zones), as well as the mapping of land surfaces including vegetation cover (e.g. forest), and mapping in support of crisis situations such as natural disasters (e.g. flooding and earthquakes) and humanitarian aid. In addition, the 12-day repeat orbit cycle of each Sentinel-1 satellite along with small orbital baselines will enable SAR interferometry (InSAR) coherent change detection applications such as the monitoring of surface deformations (e.g. subsidence due to permafrost melt) and cryosphere dynamics (e.g. glacier flow).
Figure 1: Artist's view of the deployed Sentinel-1 spacecraft (image credit: ESA, TAS-I) Spacecraft: The spacecraft is based on the PRIMA (Piattaforma Italiana Multi Applicativa) bus of TAS-I, of COSMO-SkyMed and RADARSAT-2 heritage, with a mission-specific payload module. Attitude stabilization: 3-axis, attitude accuracy = 0.01º (each axis), orbital knowledge = 10 m (each axis, 3σ using GPS). The spacecraft structure provides the accommodation for all platform and payload units. A box type structure has been adopted using external aluminum sandwich material, with a central structure in CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic). A modular approach has been taken whereby the payload is mounted to a dedicated part of the structure, allowing separate integration & test of the payload before integration to the main part of the structure carrying the platform units. This has many advantages for the overall AIT (Assembly, Integration and Test) process. 15) 16) 17) 18) 19) 20) The PRIMA platform comprises three main modules, which are structurally and functionally decoupled to allow for a parallel module integration and testing up to the satellite final integration. The modules are: 21) 1) SVM (Service Module), carrying all the bus units apart from the propulsion ones 2) PPM (Propulsion Module), carrying all the propulsion items connected by tubing and connectors 3) PLM (Payload Module), carrying all the payload equipment including the SAR Instrument antenna.
Figure 2: 3D exploded view of the Sentinel-1 platform (image credit: TAS-I) TCS (Thermal Control Subsystem): The TCS provides control of the thermal characteristics and environment of the Satellite units throughout all phases of the mission. In general the TCS is passive, with the control provided by means of standard techniques such as heat pipes, radiators and MLI (Multi-Layered Insulation). Survival heaters are provided to prevent units becoming too cold during non-operative phases. EPS (Electric Power Subsystem): The EPS uses two solar array wings for power generation. Each wing consists of 5 sandwich panels using GaAs triple junction solar cells. The average onboard power is 4.8 kW (EOL), the Li-ion battery has a capacity of 324 Ah. The PCDU (Power Control and Distribution Unit) is designed to provide adequate grounding, bonding & protection for the overall electrical system (e.g. by use of fuses) and must also be integrated into the satellite FDIR concept to ensure that adequate power resources and management are available in the event of on-board failures. Li-Ion battery technology has been selected for the batteries in view of the large benefits offered in terms of mass and energy efficiency. The spacecraft dimensions in stowed configuration are: 3.4m x 1.3 m x 1.3 m. The Sentinel-1 spacecraft has a launch mass of ~2,200 kg, the design life is 7.25 years (consumables for up to 12 years). 22) 23) Since the B2 Phase of Sentinel-1, a commonality approach with Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 was introduced and deeply investigated, to optimize and minimize as much as possible new developments, HW procurement and operations costs. Besides the differences among payload instruments and their relative required performances, each of these three satellites have its own orbital parameters, as well its own specific requirements. 24) 25)
Table 2: List of some Sentinel-1, -2, -3 characteristics and key requirements impacting on end-to-end performance 26) The Sentinel-1 spacecraft design is characterized by a single C-band SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) instrument with selectable dual polarization, a deployable solar array, large on-board science data storage, a very high X-band downlink rate, and stringent requirements on attitude accuracy and data-take timing. In addition, the spacecraft will embark the LCT (Laser Communication Terminal) unit allowing downlink of recorded data via the EDRS (European Data Relay Satellite). 27) 28)
Table 3: Main parameters of the Sentinel-1 spacecraft AVS (Avionics Subsystem): The AVS performs both Data Handling & Attitude/Orbit Control functions. This is realized through the concept of an integrated control system that performs the control of the platform and payload. The AVS performs all data management & storage functions for the satellite, including TM/TC reception and generation, subsystem & unit monitoring, autonomous switching actions and synchronization. The AVS includes the AOCS processing and the interfaces to the AOCS sensors Star trackers, fine sun sensors, and fine gyroscope and actuators, 4 reaction wheels, 3 torque rods, 14 thrusters, 2 solar array drive mechanism. 29) The AOCS comprises all means to perform transfer- and on-orbit control maneuvers and to control all necessary satellite attitude and antenna pointing states during all mission phases, starting at separation from the launcher until de-orbiting of the satellite at end of life. This includes the attitude steering of the LEO satellite to provide both yaw and roll steering capability. At present, a dedicated precise orbit predictor is implemented within the AOCS, in addition to making use of the data uploaded to the payload by the GPS constellation. The AOCS (Attitude and Orbit Control Subsystem) is able to perform some functions autonomously and it is supported by a very reliable FDIR scheme (Ref. 15). Telecommand data will be received from the TT&C subsystem and will be decoded and deformatted in the AVS. AOCS consists of the following sensors and actuators: fine sun sensors, magnetometers, gyroscopes, star trackers, GPS receivers, magnetic torquers, a reaction wheels assembly and a monopropellant (hydrazine) propulsion system. The propulsion system has 3 pairs of 1 N orbit control thrusters and 4 pairs of reaction control thrusters for attitude correction. Every pair is made up of a prime and a redundant component. The attitude control thrusters are fired when the spacecraft enters RDM (Rate Damping Mode) after separation, damping any residual rotation left by the launcher upper stage and achieving a spacecraft pitch rotation of -8 times the orbital period. In the subsequent AOCS mode, called SHM (Safe Hold Mode), magnetotorquers and reaction wheels maintain the attitude and reduce the pitch rotation rate to twice the orbital period. The periodic behavior of the Earth’s magnetic field in a polar orbit and the polarization of the angular momentum with the loading of the reaction wheels allow the magnetotorquers to maintain this pitch rate while aligning the spacecraft –Y axis with the orbit normal, which in a dusk-dawn orbit coincides with the direction to the Sun (Figure 3). When the appendages deployment commences, the effect of the gravity gradient torque dominates over the magnetic torque, resulting in the alignment of the S/C X axis (appendages axis) with the nadir direction, maintaining thus a pitch rate equal to the orbital period. Upon ground telecommand, a transition into the NPM (Normal Pointing Mode) occurs, where the spacecraft performs a fine attitude control based on the use of reaction wheels in close loop with star trackers, gyroscopes and GPS, and magnetotorquers for wheel unloading (Ref. 20).
Figure 3: Sentinel-1A stowed representation (in RDM and SHM). +X S/C axis points towards the flight direction. S/C Y axis is aligned with the Sun direction. Solar Array –Y illuminated when stowed (image credit: ESA, Ref. 20)
Figure 4: Architecture of the avionics subsystem (image credit: TAS-I)
Table 4: Sentinel-1 attitude steering modes (Ref. 97)
Figure 5: Spacecraft power generation and distribution (image credit: TAS-I) PDHT (Payload Data Handling & Transmission) subsystem (Ref. 24): The commonality process is driving the spacecraft design with the objective to satisfy the needs of three different missions within the same product. This involves several Sentinels subsystems: in particular, TAS-I was selected to coordinate the common design of two assemblies: 30) • TXA (Telemetry X-band transmission Assembly) 31) • XBAA (X-Band Antenna Assembly) The objective of the PDHT subsystem is to provide the services of data acquisition, storage and transmission to the ground in X-band. After having acquired observation data from the DSHA (Data Storage and Handling Assembly), the TXA executes encoding, modulation, up-conversion, amplification and filtering; the X-band signal provided at the TXA output is then transmitted by an isoflux, wide coverage antenna, included in the XBAA. To summarize, the performance requirements on TXA specification took into account the different needs of the Sentinels, allowing a fully recurrent units approach: beside a specific TXA layout due to accommodation needs, the modulator, TWTA, and RF filter are exactly the same for the three Sentinels. After the selection of the TXA & XBAA suppliers (TAS-España and TAS-I IUEL respectively), an agreement was reached between ESA and the Sentinel prime contractors on the way to handle the common design and procurement for TXA and XBAA. Besides strong efforts to manage different needs coming from different missions, the commonality activities performed in the frame of Copernicus Sentinels enable an effective optimization of costs and development time for those subsystems selected for a common design. To provide flexibility in the downlink operation, the PDHT is designed with two X-band independent links. The PDHT provides an overall input/output throughput of about 1950 Mbit/s, with a payload input data rate of 2 x 640 Mbit/s (multi-polarization acquisition) or 1 x 1280 Mbit/s (single-polarization acquisition) and a transmitted symbol rate of 2 x 112 Msample/s. The data storage capacity is > 1410 Gbit at EOL. The provided antenna isoflux coverage zone is about ±64º with respect to nadir to allow link establishment with the ground starting from the ground antenna elevation angle of 5º above the horizon.
Figure 6: The PDHT (Payload Data Handling & Transmission) subsystem (image credit: TAS-I) Legend of Figure 6: • DSHA (Data Storage & Handling Assembly) • TXA (Telemetry X-band transmission Assembly) • XBAA (X-band Antenna Assembly)
Table 5: Main performance characteristics of the PDHT The TXA architecture provides two redundant X-band channels with the same output power (16 dBW) and useful data rate (260 Mbit/s). Cold redundancy is implemented at channel level. The main elements of the assembly are: - X-band modulators, developed by TAS-F, are fully compliant with ECSS and modulation standard - TWTA (Traveling Wave Tube Amplifiers), provided by TAS-B (ETCA), deliver up to 60 W RF power - OMUX (Optical Multiplexer), developed by TAS-F, filters and combines both channels and provides out of band rejection. To achieve good spectral confinement and especially to ensure that the emission levels in the adjacent deep space band (8400 to 8450 MHz) are respected, both baseband filtering with a roll-off of 0.35 (0.35-SRRC) and filtering techniques have been applied. In addition, 6-pole channel band pass filters have been implemented in the OMUX. The 6-pole solution provides two main advantages in front of other less selective solutions, such as 4-pole: - It filters our more efficiently the regrowth of baseband filtered 8PSK carrier due to the gain nonlinearity of the TWTA, thus allowing for a better overall DC efficiency - It is compatible with data rates up to 300 Mbit/s per channel by adjusting the frequency plan (increase of frequency spacing between channels).
Figure 7: Architecture of the TXA (image credit: TAS)
Table 6: Summary of the key performances of the Sentinel TXA PRP (Propulsion Subsystem): The PRP is based on 14 RCTs (Reaction Control Thrusters) located in 4 different sides of the spacecraft, provides the means to make orbit corrections to maintain the requested tight orbit control throughout the mission. Initially, corrections are required to reach the final orbit position after separation from the launcher. During the mission, some infrequent corrections to the orbit are necessary to maintain the requirements upon the relative and absolute positioning of individual satellite. The thrusters located on the –Z side of the satellite are specifically dedicated to attitude control during the safe mode.
Figure 8: Sentinel-1 satellite block diagram (TAS-I, ESA, Ref. 15)
Figure 9: Stowed satellite views (image credit: TAS-I) RF communications: Onboard source data storage volume of 900 Gbit (EOL). TT&C communications in S-band at 4 kbit/s in uplink and 16, 128, or 512 kbit/s in downlink (programmable). Payload downlink in X-band at a data rate of 2 x 260 Mbit/s. The Copernicus Sentinel spacecraft are the first ESA Earth Observation spacecraft to implement communications security on the command link. It has been decided to secure the spacecraft from unauthorised command access by adding a security trailer to the command segments which are sent to the spacecraft. The trailer is composed of a Logical Authentication Counter and a Message Authentication Code. The latter is obtained by performing cryptographic encryption of the hash value of the command segment and the Logical Authentication Counter. Only parties in possession of the right key can perform this operation in a way that the command segment is accepted by the spacecraft. The concept applies to all Copernicus Sentinel spacecraft. 32) Science data compression: Currently, the most promising solution seems to be the FDBAQ (Flexible Dynamic Block Adaptive Quantization) approach as proposed by ESA; 3 output bits would be sufficient for most of “typical” acquisitions over various targets, while few high reflectivity scenes would need 4 bits, making the expected average output bit rate little higher then 3 bits, thus lower then the estimated 3.7 bits for the ECBAQ (Entropy-Constrained Block Adaptive Quantization) compression. 33) 34) 35) 36) Data delivery: Sentinel-1 will provide a high level of service reliability with near-realtime delivery of data within 1 hour after reception by the ground station, and with data delivery from archive within 24 hours. OCP (Optical Communication Payload): In parallel to the RF communications, an optical LEO-GEO communications link using the LCT (Laser Communication Terminal) of Tesat-Spacecom (Backnang, Germany) will be provided on the Sentinel spacecraft. The LCT is based on a heritage design (TerraSAR-X) with a transmit power of 2.2 W and a telescope of 135 mm aperture to meet the requirement of the larger link distance. The GEO LCT will be accommodated on AlphaSat of ESA/industry (launch 2012) and later on the EDRS (European Data Relay Satellite) system of ESA. The GEO relay consists of an optical 2.8 Gbit/s (1.8 Gbit/s user data) communication link from the LEO to the GEO satellite and of a 600 Mbit/s Ka-band communication link from the GEO satellite to the ground. 37) Since the Ka-band downlink is the bottleneck for the whole GEO relay system, an optical ground station for a 5.625 Gbit/s LEO-to-ground and a 2.8 Gbit/s GEO-to-ground communication link is under development.
Table 7: Technical data of the LCT generations 38) Ground segment: Spacecraft operations is provided by ESOC, Darmstadt, while the payload data processing and archiving functions (including the planning for SAR data acquisitions) are provided by ESRIN, Frascati. Options are being provided to permit some functions to be outscored to other operating entities.
Figure 10: Isometric views of the deployed satellite (image credit: TAS-I)
Figure 11: SAR antenna deployment test supported by zero gravity deployment device (solar array in stowed position), image credit: TAS-I, (Ref. 21) Figure 12 shows the fully integrated Sentinel-1A spacecraft with the SAR antenna and the solar array wings in stowed position. The figure shows the Sentinel-1 spacecraft already mounted on the shaker and ready for sine vibration testing after it has successfully passed the Mass Properties measurements (namely center of mass and inertia moments). Successful completion of vibration and acoustic testing has been followed by the deployment tests of both the SAR antenna and the solar array. Each solar array is tied down on four hold down points by dedicated Kevlar cables. Wing deployment is purely passive, driven by springs, and actuated upon activation of specific thermal knives devices. The time to complete deployment of one wing lasts about 3.5 minutes since the last cable cut. In the end position, the solar array panels are mechanically latched.
Figure 12: Photo of the Sentinel-1A spacecraft during functional tests in Cannes, France (image credit: TAS) 39) • Prior to shipment to the launch site in late February 2014, the Sentinel-1 spacecraft has spent the last couple of months at Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France, being put through a last set of stringent tests. This included suspending the satellite from a structure to simulate weightlessness and carefully unfolding the two 10 m-long solar wings and the 12 m-long radar antenna. 40) • The first satellite dedicated to Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring program arrived at Cayenne in French Guiana on 24 February 2014. Sentinel-1A is scheduled to be launched from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou on 3 April. By delivering timely information for numerous operational services, from monitoring ice in polar oceans to tracking land subsidence, Sentinel-1 is set to play a vital role in the largest civil Earth observation programme ever conceived. 41)
Figure 13: The Sentinel-1A radar satellite has arrived at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana to be prepared over the coming weeks for launch in April (image credit: ESA,M. Shafiq) 42) Launch of S-1A: The Sentinel-1A spacecraft was launched on April 3, 2014 (21:02 UTC) on a Soyuz-STB Fregat vehicle from Kourou, French Guiana (the launch is designated as VS07 by the launch provider Arianespace). After a 617 second burn, the Fregat upper stage delivered Sentinel-1A into a Sun-synchronous orbit at 693 km altitude. The satellite separated from the upper stage 23 min 24 sec after liftoff. 43)
Launch of S-1B: The Sentinel-1B spacecraft, a twin sister of Sentinel-1A, was launched on April 25, 2016 (21:02:13 GMT) into the same orbital plane of Sentinel-1A (phased by 180º). The launcher was a Soyuz-STA/Fregat vehicle (VS 14) of Arianespace and the launch site was Kourou. 44) 45) The contract between ESA and Arianespace to launch the Sentinel-1B satellite was signed on July 17, 2014 by ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programs, Volker Liebig, and CEO of Arianespace, Stéphane Israël, at ESA headquarters in Paris, France. As part of the Copernicus program, Sentinel-1B will round out the initial capacity offered by Sentinel-1A to offer a comprehensive response to the need for environmental and security monitoring via spaceborne radar systems. 46) 47) 48) On March 22, 2016, the Sentinel-1B satellite has arrived in French Guiana to be prepared for liftoff on 22 April. 49) Secondary payloads of Sentinel-1B: 50) • MicroSCOPE, a minisatellite (303 kg) of CNES (French Space Agency) which will test the universality of free fall (equivalence principle for inertial and gravitational mass as stated by Albert Einstein). • AAUSAT4, a 1U CubeSat of the University of Aalborg, Denmark to demonstrate an AIS (Automatic Identification System), identifying and locating ships sailing offshore in coastal regions. • e-st@r-II (Educational SaTellite @ politecnico di toRino-II), a 1U CubeSat from the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy. • OUFTI-1 (Orbital Utility for Telecommunication Innovation), a 1U CubeSat of the University of Liège, Belgium, a demonstrator for the D-STAR communications protocol. Tyvak International installed the three CubeSats in the orbital deployer. The three CubeSats are part of ESA's FYS (Fly Your Satellite) student program.
Orbit: Sun-synchronous near-circular dawn-dusk orbit, altitude = 693 km, inclination = 98.18º, orbital period = 98.6 minutes, ground track repeat cycle = 12 days (175 orbits/cycle). An exact repeat cycle is needed for InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) support. LTAN (Local Time on Ascending Node) = 18:00 hours. Orbital tube: A stringent orbit control is required to the Sentinel-1 system. Satellites’ position along the orbit needs to be very accurate, in terms of both accuracy and knowledge, together with pointing and timing/synchronization between interferometric pairs. Orbit positioning control for Sentinel-1 is defined by way of an orbital Earth fixed “tube” 50 m (rms) wide in radius around a nominal operational path (Figure 14). The satellite is kept inside such a tube for most of its operational lifetime Ref. 15). 51) One of the challenges of the Sentinel-1 orbit control strategy is the translation of a statistical tube definition in a deterministic control strategy practically functional to the ESOC (European Space Operations Center) operations.
Figure 14: Schematic view of the orbital tube (image credit: ESA, TAS, Ref. 15) 52) The second obvious challenge is the very stringent tube diameter which forces the application of frequent and intense maneuvers nevertheless still compatible with S/C request for consumables of up to a 12 years lifetime. A satellite control strategy has been specifically developed and consists in applying a strict cross-track dead-band control in the most Northern Point and in the ascending node crossing. Controlling the orbit at these 2 latitudes, the satellite is shown to remain in the tube, within the rms (root mean square) criteria, for all other latitudes.
Figure 15: Orbital tube section (image credit: ESA, TAS, Ref. 15) Orbit knowledge accuracy (< 3 m rms in each axis) in realtime for autonomous operations is not considered as demanding as the on-ground postprocessing requirements (< 5 cm 3D rms) for the detection of (slow) land movements and deformations through the differential interferometry technique. The latter is almost as demanding as for Sentinel-3 and requires dual-frequency receivers. 53) As both satellites, Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B, will fly in the in the same orbital plane with 180º phased in orbit, and each having a 12-day repeat orbit cycle, it will facilitate the formation of SAR interferometry (InSAR) image pairs (i.e., interferograms) having time intervals of 6 days. This, along with the fact that the orbital deviation of each Sentinel-1 satellite will be maintained within a tube of ±50 m radius (rms) will enable the generation of geographically comprehensive maps of surface change such as for measuring ice velocity in the Polar regions, as well as monitoring geohazard related surface deformation caused by tectonic processes, volcanic activities, landslides, and subsidence (Ref. 119).
Figure 16: The main Sentinel-1 mode will allow complete coverage of Earth in six days when operational with the two Sentinel-1 satellites are in orbit simultaneously (image credit: ESA/ATG medialab) 54)
Development status of Sentinel-1C • August 7, 2020: In two years’ time, the next Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite will be launched to join its two siblings in orbit around Earth. With engineers busy building Sentinel-1C, they have recently tested the mechanism that opens its 12 m-long radar antenna. 55) - Copernicus Sentinel-1C is the third Sentinel-1 satellite, following Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B, which were launched in April 2014 and April 2016, respectively. The three satellites are identical, each carrying an advanced radar instrument to provide an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface. The mission has been used to monitor the movement of icebergs, ice sheets and glaciers, ground deformation because of subsidence and earthquakes, floods after severe storms, and much more. - Sentinel-1C is set to ensure the continuity of critical radar images that so many Copernicus environmental services and scientists now rely on. - The mission’s technical success is thanks to its radar instrument – which when open spans a whopping 12 m. Because the radar is folded to fit into the rocket fairing for liftoff, the deployment mechanism must be thoroughly tested to ensure that all will be well once it is in space. - This important milestone test has recently been passed at Airbus’ facilities in Germany. - To simulate this operation in as near realistic environment as is possible on Earth, engineers hang the radar from a structure that helps to mimic weightlessness. The deployment test not only enables the hardware needed for the deployment to be tested, but also allows for the antenna planarity and flatness to be measured when fully deployed. - Following these deployment test and planarity checks, the instrument will now undergo radio frequency measurements to measure its radiation patterns and radiometric performance. - A second and last deployment test will be carried out in France, once the radar instrument has been connected to the satellite platform. - “While, a lot of attention is, quite rightly, devoted to the further expansion of the measurement capabilities of the Copernicus system, we are also focused on ensuring the long-term availability of data produced by the current suite Sentinels to which Europe is fully committed,” says Guido Levrini, ESA’s Copernicus Space Segment Program Manager. - “This impressive milestone involving the deployment of the huge Sentinel-1C radar antenna - a technological jewel – has, remarkably, been achieved amid the COVID pandemic.” - Copernicus is the biggest provider of Earth observation data in the world – and while the EU is at the helm of this environmental monitoring program, ESA develops, builds and launches the dedicated satellites. It also operates some of the missions and ensures the availability of data from third party missions.
Figure 17: Copernicus Sentinel-1C is the third Sentinel-1 satellite. The three satellites are identical, each carrying an advanced radar instrument to provide an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface. When deployed in space, the radar measures a whopping 12 meters. Because the radar is folded to fit into the rocket fairing for liftoff, the deployment mechanism must be thoroughly tested to ensure that all will be well once it is in space. To simulate this operation in as near realistic environment as is possible on Earth, the radar is hung from a structure that helps to mimic weightlessness. The deployment test not only enables the hardware needed for the deployment to be tested, but also allows for the antenna planarity and flatness to be measured when fully deployed. The tests were carried out at Airbus in Germany (image credit: Airbus)
Note: As of July 2019, the previously single large Sentinel-1 file has been split into two files, to make the file handling manageable for all parties concerned, in particular for the user community. As of 30 April 2020, the Sentinel-1 file has been split into three files. • This article covers the Sentinel-1 mission and its imagery in the period 2020 • Sentinel-1 mission and its imagery in the period 2019 • Sentinel-1 imagery in the period 2018-2014
Mission status and some of its imagery for the period 2020 + 2021 • March 2, 2021: A giant iceberg, approximately 1.5 times the size of Greater Paris, broke off from the northern section of Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf on Friday 26th February. New radar images, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, show the 1270 km2 iceberg breaking free and moving away rapidly from the floating ice shelf. 56) - Glaciologists have been closely monitoring the many cracks and chasms that have formed in the 150 m thick Brunt Ice Shelf over the past years. In late-2019, a new crack was spotted in the portion of the ice shelf north of the McDonald Ice Rumples, heading towards another large crack near the Stancomb-Wills Glacier Tongue.
Figure 18: This latest rift was closely monitored by satellite imagery, as it was seen quickly cutting across the ice shelf. Recent ice surface velocity data derived from Sentinel-1 data indicated the region north of the new crack to be the most unstable – moving around 5 m per day. Then, in the early hours of Friday 26th, the newer crack widened rapidly before finally breaking free from the rest of the floating ice shelf (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) - ESA’s Mark Drinkwater said, “Although the calving of the new berg was expected and forecasted some weeks ago, watching such remote events unfold is still captivating. Over the following weeks and months, the iceberg could be entrained in the swift south-westerly flowing coastal current, run aground or cause further damage by bumping into the southern Brunt Ice Shelf. So we will be carefully monitoring the situation using data provided by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission.” - Although currently unnamed, the iceberg has been informally dubbed ‘A-74’. Antarctic icebergs are named from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, then a sequential number, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter. - The calving does not pose a threat to the presently unmanned British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI Research Station, which was re-positioned in 2017 to a more secure location after the ice shelf was deemed unsafe. - Routine monitoring by satellites offer unprecedented views of events happening in remote regions like Antarctica, and how ice shelves manage to retain their structural integrity in response to changes in ice dynamics, air and ocean temperatures. The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission carries radar, which can return images regardless of day or night and this allows us year-round viewing, which is especially important through the long, dark, austral winter months. • February 23, 2021: Using a 25-year record of satellite observations over the Getz region in West Antarctica, scientists have discovered that the pace at which glaciers flow towards the ocean is accelerating. This new research, which includes data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission and ESA’s CryoSat mission, will help determine if these glaciers could collapse in the next few decades and how this would affect future global sea-level rise. 57) - Ice lost from Antarctica frequently hits the headlines, but this is the first time that scientists have studied this particular area in depth. - Led by scientists at the University of Leeds in the UK, the new research shows that between 1994 and 2018, all 14 glaciers in Getz accelerated, on average, by almost 25%, with three glaciers accelerating by over 44%. - The results, published today in Nature Communications, also reported that the glaciers lost a total of 315 gigatons of ice, adding 0.9 mm to global mean sea level – equivalent to 126 million Olympic swimming pools of water. 58) - Heather Selley, lead author of the study and a glaciologist at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, said, “The Getz region of Antarctica is so remote that humans have never set foot on the majority of it. - “However, satellites can tell us what is going on and the high rates of increased glacier speed, coupled with ice thinning, now confirms the Getz basin is in ‘dynamic imbalance’, meaning that it is losing more ice than it gains through snowfall.” - The scientists used two different types of satellite measurements. - Radar data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, legacy data from the ERS mission through ESA’s Climate Change Initiative and NASA’s MEaSUREs data record allowed them to calculate how fast the glaciers have been moving over the 25-year study period. - To measure how much the ice has been thinning, they used altimetry data from ESA’s ERS, Envisat and CryoSat missions through the IMBIE assessment. - “Using a combination of observations and modelling, we show highly localized patterns of acceleration. For instance, we observe the greatest change in the central region of Getz, with one glacier flowing 391 meters a year faster in 2018 than in 1994. This is a substantial change as it is now flowing at a rate of 669 meters a year, a 59% increase in just two and a half decades,” continued Heather. - The research, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and ESA’s Science for Society programme, reports how the widely reported thinning and acceleration observed in the neighboring Amundsen Sea glaciers, now extends over 1000 km along the West Antarctic coastline into Getz. - Anna Hogg, study co-author, said, “The pattern of glacier acceleration shows the highly localized response to ocean dynamics. - “High-resolution satellite observations from satellites such as Sentinel-1, which collects a repeat image every six-days, means we can measure localized speed changes with ever greater detail.
Figure 19: Scientists have discovered that glaciers in the Getz region of Antarctica are increasing in speed as they flow towards the ocean. This new research, which includes data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, will help determine if these glaciers could collapse in the next few decades and how this would affect future global sea-level rise (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020–21), processed by ESA, University of Leeds)
Figure 20: Getz glacier velocity. Between 1994 and 2018, all 14 glaciers in Getz accelerated, on average, by almost 25%, with three glaciers accelerating by over 44%. While each of the 14 glaciers has been assigned a number in the map, the names of glaciers 10 to 14 are also shown (image credit: University of Leeds/ESA/MEaSUREs version 1, 2016–17 (multimission data), NASA/REMA, PGC/IBCSO, GEBCO)
Figure 21: Antarctic ice velocity. The image shows the different rates of glacier flow in Antarctica between 1996 and 2016. Through recent research, scientists have discovered that glaciers in the Getz region (shown within the black rectangle), are accelerating in their flow towards the ocean. Between 1994 and 2018, all 14 glaciers in Getz accelerated, on average, by almost 25%, with three glaciers accelerating by over 44%. Data from multiple missions (ALOS, Envisat, ERS-1, ERS-2, Landsat-8, Radarsat-1, Radarsat-2, Sentinel-1A, TDX, TSX) were used to measure this glacier flow (image credit: ESA/MEaSUREs version 2, 1996–2016 (multimission data), NASA, NSIDC/BAS)
Figure 22: Visualizing ice lost from Getz glaciers. Led by scientists at the University of Leeds in the UK, new research shows that between 1994 and 2018, all 14 glaciers in Getz have lost ice. The glaciers lost a total of 315 gigatons of ice, adding 0.9 mm to global mean sea level – equivalent to 126 million Olympic swimming pools of water. These cubes positioned over Manhattan represent the ice lost over time, and clearly show that ice loss is increasing (image credit: University of Leeds/ESA/Google basemap) • February 19, 2021: Traditionally, optical, or ‘camera-like’, satellite images are used to map different crops from space, but a recent study shows that Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar data along with interferometric processing can make crop-type mapping even better. This, in turn, will help improve crop-yield forecasts, production statistics, drought and storm damage assessments, and more. 59) - The Sentinel-1 mission comprises two identical satellites, each carrying an advanced radar instrument to provide a day-and-night, all-weather supply of images of Earth’s surface. These images are used for numerous applications such as monitoring sea ice and floods, as well as shifts in the land surface or ice surface through the process of interferometry (InSAR) – which is where images of the same place from consecutive satellite passes are compared to reveal differences that occurred between image acquisitions. - Going further, a paper, published in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, describes how Sentinel-1 InSAR can go beyond the measurement of terrain displacement. 60)
Figure 23: Traditionally, optical, or ‘camera-like’, satellite images are used to map different crops from space, but a recent study shows that Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar data along with interferometric processing can make crop-type mapping even better. This, in turn, will help improve crop-yield forecasts, production statistics, drought and storm damage assessments, and more (image credit: Pixabay) - Part of this research was carried out through ESA’s SInCohMap project, which is dedicated to exploring innovative methodologies for land-cover and vegetation mapping using Sentinel-1 multitemporal InSAR coherence data. - The constellation of the two identical Sentinel-1 satellites orbiting Earth 180° apart allows most parts of the world to be imaged every six days. The satellites’ radar instruments can transmit a signal in either horizontal (H) or vertical (V) polarisation, and then receive in both H and V polarisations.
Figure 24: Coherence for four crop types. As a part of ESA’s SInCohMap project, which is dedicated to exploring innovative methodologies for land-cover and vegetation mapping using Sentinel-1 multitemporal coherence data, the usefulness of coherence time series for crop-type mapping has been demonstrated recently. The Sentinel-1 satellites’ radar instruments can transmit in either horizontal (H) or vertical (V) polarization, and then receive in both H and V polarizations. The plots show the temporal patterns of coherence, both VV and VH, measured for four crop classes: alfalfa, maize, sugar beet and wheat. Alfalfa exhibits a long growth season, translated into low coherence, from January to September, whereas maize presents a much shorter cycle concentrated in summer (image credit: ESA the image contains modified Copernicus data (2017), processed by DARES Technology. Time series computed and processed at University of Alicante) - The year-long time series of data from 2017 combined pairs of Sentinel-1 images of an agricultural area in Seville, Spain. The images were used to classify 17 different crop types cultivated that year. Coherence was measured by using the pairs of consecutive images, acquired with the separation of six days and at the two polarizations. - The plot (Figure 24) shows the temporal patterns of coherence, in both VV and VH, measured for four crop classes: alfalfa, maize, sugar beet and wheat. Alfalfa exhibits a long growth season, translated into low coherence, from January to September, whereas maize presents a much shorter cycle concentrated in summer. - “The analysis of the time series shows that coherence drops in presence of crop growth, whereas it increases out of season,” describes Alejandro Mestre-Quereda from the University of Alicante and lead author of the paper. “Since the cultivation dates and the duration of the campaign is typical for each crop type, this characteristic response has enabled the generation of crop-type maps with an overall accuracy of 80%.”
Figure 25: Crop changes over one year. The animation shows coherence maps gathered over the whole year. The presence of white and black rectangles in the cultivation area is according to the absence or presence of crops, and how they change along the year (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus data (2017), processed by DARES Technology. Coherence images and animation were obtained at University of Alicante) - Juan M. Lopez-Sanchez, also from the University of Alicante, added, “Some crop types which were poorly classified by either intensity or coherence are better distinguished by the combination of both types of polarization data types. In other words, both sources of information are indeed complementary.” - Crop-type mapping using satellite imagery plays a key role in Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy, in which ‘checks by monitoring’ are being established routinely to reduce field work and the associated bureaucracy. Moreover, it also helps monitor potential threats to ecosystems if new crops are introduced close to protected areas. - During the development of the SInCohMap project, all the possible combinations of images acquired in one year were computed and analyzed. - “One of the big challenges was the amount of data that needed to be handled, but the uniqueness of the six-day coherence in this case greatly reduces the data storage requirements,” explains Alexander Jacob of EURAC Research, in charge of the data infrastructure. - In conclusion, the study shows that Sentinel-1 interferometry constitutes a solid source of information for performing crop-type classification, hence going beyond the well-known application of terrain displacement monitoring. - ESA’s Marcus Engdahl remarks, “The Copernicus Sentinel-1 constellation has been a game-changer for radar remote sensing globally. This study demonstrates that it is possible to derive still more useful information about vegetation and land-cover by using InSAR techniques. Radar remote sensing is profoundly changing vegetation monitoring, and the planned Copernicus Expansion mission ROSE-L with its L-band radar system is going to enable another large increase in global monitoring capabilities.” - The SInCohMap project consortium includes DARES Technology (ES), EURAC Research (IT), University of Alicante (ES), Technical University of Catalonia (ES), IGIK (PL), and University of Rennes 1 (FR).
Figure 26: Crop-type map (image credit: Ground truth data: Regional Government of Andalusia. Crop map: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by University of Alicante) • February 12, 2021: In early 2019, all eyes were fixed on the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica, where a massive iceberg, around the size of Greater London, appeared poised to break off. Almost two years later, the berg is desperately clinging on, although current data indicate calving is imminent. A new crack, spotted in images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel missions, now suggests the potential for calving of multiple bergs. 61) - For years, glaciologists have been tracking a number of cracks in the Brunt Ice Shelf, which borders the Coats Land coast in the Weddell Sea sector of Antarctica. The lengthening of two main cracks in the ice shelf, separated only by a few kilometers, have been closely monitored by satellite imagery. Chasm 1, the large crack running northwards from the southernmost part of Brunt, has been set in place for more than 25 years, while the Halloween crack was first spotted on 31 October 2016. - A more recent, unnamed crack was first noticed in observations from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission in late-2019, recently extending by more than 20 km in length. Satellite data has also been used to track the movement and measure the resulting strain in the ice shelf. The map below shows the ice surface velocity on the Brunt and Stancomb-Wills Ice Shelf complex, derived by comparing two Sentinel-1 acquisitions captured on 5 January and 17 January 2021.
Figure 27: Ice velocity map of the Brunt and Stancomb-Wills Ice Shelf. - Satellite data has been used to measure the surface movement of the ice shelf. The map shows the ice surface velocity on the Brunt Ice Shelf, derived by comparing two Copernicus Sentinel-1 acquisitions captured on 5 January and 17 January 2021. The surface velocity data suggest the upper red area, northwest of the new crack, to be the most unstable, with an approximate movement of almost 5 m per day. The central portion has an average velocity ranging from 2 to 2.5 m per day, while the lower area (visible in blue) suggests a more stable zone of the ice shelf in the vicinity of the coastal grounded ice (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) - The data indicate the region of the floating ice shelf, to the north of the new crack, to be the most unstable, with an approximate movement of almost 5 m per day. The central portion has an average velocity ranging from 2 to 2.5 m per day, while the lower area (visible in blue) suggests a more stable zone of the ice shelf. - “Though appearing poised to calve in 2019, the south westernmost region of the Brunt Ice Shelf tenaciously resisted separation,” noted ESA’s Mark Drinkwater. “Since then, Sentinel-1 data indicate the nose of the ice shelf to be pivoting clockwise around the McDonald Ice Rumples region in which point the shelf ice is grounded on shallow underwater topography.” - “Meanwhile, the strong gradient in ice velocity towards the faster moving Stancomb-Wills ice stream, and ice shelf in the north, has activated a new rift which now threatens the release of a second large iceberg.” - Routine monitoring from satellites offer unprecedented views of events happening in remote regions, and show how ice shelves are responding to changes in ice dynamics, air and ocean temperatures. Since Antarctica is in the dark winter months, radar images are indispensable because, apart from the region being remote, radar continues to deliver images regardless of the dark weather. - Mark Drinkwater continued, “With today’s Copernicus monitoring system, we are far better equipped not only to observe events in remote places like Antarctica in near real time, but more importantly, to turn this scientific data into theoretical understanding of complex ice fracture processes.” - History shows that the last major event took on the Brunt Ice Shelf took place in 1971, when a portion of ice calved north of the area known as the McDonald Ice Rumples in what appears to be replicated by today’s Halloween Crack. - With the ice shelf deemed unsafe due to the encroaching cracks in 2017, the British Antarctic Survey closed up their Halley VI research station, and re-positioned south of Halloween Crack to a more secure location. Operational since 2012, Halley VI is made up of eight interlinked pods built on skis. This allows the pods to be easily moved in case of unstable ice and cracks on the ice shelf.
Figure 28: A new crack has been spotted in the portion of the floating ice shelf north of the McDonald Ice Rumples, which may prompt the calving of multiple bergs. The extent of this new crack can be seen the top of the image. The temporal change locations of the new crack come from visual interpretation of Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images. The lengthening of the other two main cracks in the ice shelf, separated only by a few kilometers, have been closely monitored by satellite imagery. Chasm 1, the large crack running northwards has been set in place for more than 25 years, while the Halloween crack was first spotted on 31 October 2016 (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
Figure 29: Location of the Brunt Ice Shelf. The Brunt Ice Shelf borders the Coats Land coast in the Weddell Sea sector of Antarctica. The image uses sea-ice concentration data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) onboard JAXA’s GCOM-W satellite processed by the University of Bremen [image credit: ESA (Data sources: JAXA/University of Bremen/BAS)] • February 3, 2021: Satellite images have revealed that the once colossal A-68A iceberg has had yet another shattering experience. Several large cracks were spotted in the berg last week and it has since broken into multiple pieces. These little icebergs could indicate the end of A-68A’s environmental threat to South Georgia. 62) - One of the largest icebergs of all time, A-68A broke off from the Larsen-C ice shelf in 2017 and has been closely monitored over recent months as it veered dangerously close to South Georgia in the South Atlantic. - The iceberg’s close position to the remote island prompted fears that it would anchor itself to the coast and impact the fragile ecosystem that thrives around the island, through the scraping of the seabed or the release of cold freshwater into the surrounding ocean. - In December 2020, the iceberg changed direction, as ocean surface currents steered by sea floor bathymetry, diverted it in a southeast direction away from the island, losing a huge chunk of ice in the process. - Images, captured by the Copernicus fleet of satellites have charted the process of A-68A on its journey over the course of the past three years. Latest data coming from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission shows the iceberg suffered further damage in 2021 as a new iceberg calved from A-68A just last week. The smaller slab, promptly named A-68G by the US National Ice Center, measures approximately 53 km in length and around 18 km at its widest point.
Figure 30: A-68A and A-68G. Satellite images have revealed that the once colossal A-68A iceberg has had yet another shattering experience. Several large cracks were spotted in the berg last week and it has since broken into multiple pieces. These little icebergs could indicate the end of A-68A’s environmental threat to South Georgia. New images, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, show the iceberg suffered further damage as a new iceberg calved from A-68A just last week. The smaller slab, promptly named A-68G by the US National Ice Center, measures approximately 45 km in length and around 18 km at its widest point (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
Figure 31: New images, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, show the iceberg suffered further damage as a new iceberg calved from A-68A just last week (image credit: ESA)
Figure 32: A-68 iceberg positions as seen by Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission. Satellite images have revealed that the once colossal A-68A iceberg has had yet another shattering experience. Several large cracks were spotted in the berg last week and it has since broken into multiple pieces. These little icebergs could indicate the end of A-68A’s environmental threat to South Georgia (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) - Soon after, a large crack developed where A-68G broke free, resulting in the almost-immediate calving of an additional two icebergs: A-68H (around 20 km in length and 9 km width) and A-68I (around 30 km long and 5 km width at its widest point). Antarctic icebergs are named from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, then a sequential number, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter. - The main A-68A iceberg, once the world’s largest, now measures only around 60 km in length with a maximum width of 22 km. The collective group of icebergs appear to be drifting apart, with the A-68H moving northwards, approximately 130 km from South Georgia. As of today, the main A-68A iceberg appears to be moving south and is currently around 225 km from South Georgia. This latest calving event could indicate that the bergs will most likely travel away from the island, no longer threatening the island’s wildlife. - Optical imagery from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, while revealing great details of A-68A, is only available in cloud-free conditions. Sentinel-3 and soon, Sentinel-6, radar altimeter measurements can monitor the trajectory of icebergs and are also used to calculate estimates of geostrophic ocean currents that carry A-68A and its children on their journey. Sentinel-1 radar imagery is not affected by clouds, and has been vital in tracking the break-up of A-68A.
Figure 33: A-68 iceberg positions on 30 January. Satellite images have revealed that the once colossal A-68A iceberg has had yet another shattering experience. Several large cracks were spotted in the berg last week and it has since broken into multiple pieces. These little icebergs could indicate the end of A-68A’s environmental threat to South Georgia (image credit: British Antarctic Survey/ESA) • January 28, 2021: After almost three months at sea, competitors of the Vendée Globe sailing race are now nearing the finishing point back in France, but while they were near the treacherous iceberg-infested waters of the Southern Ocean they remained relatively safe thanks to satellite observations. Read full story: Copernicus satellites keep eyes on icebergs for Vendée Globe. 63) - To ensure their safety, CLS, a subsidiary of the French CNES space agency, and CNP used information from satellites to detect and monitor icebergs. This information comes from satellites carrying altimeters, as well as those carrying synthetic aperture radar (SAR) such as Copernicus Sentinel-1. Satellites are the only way of detecting and monitoring icebergs effectively in the remote Southern Oceans. - Before the race started, this satellite information allowed CLS to establish an initial exclusion zone around Antarctica to keep sailors away from icebergs. Remarkably, they updated the zone no less than five times as the icy waters changed. These updates were provided to the Vendée Globe race organizers, who then communicated it to the skippers.
Figure 34: The image shows the main features of the clusters of icebergs detected with altimetry (colored dots), Sentinel-1 wave mode (large cyan snowflakes) and Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar imagery (small blue snowflakes). These detections are plotted on a sea-surface temperature map. The image shows the extensive use of Sentinel-1 (black frames) during the Vendée Globe 2020–21, as well as the final version of the Antarctic Exclusion Zone (white line), image credit: CLS/Google Earth) • January 15, 2021: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Tanezrouft Basin – one of the most desolate parts of the Sahara Desert. 64)
Figure 35: Tanezrouft is a region of the Sahara lying in southern Algeria and northern Mali. The hyperarid area is known for its soaring temperatures and scarce access to water and vegetation, a reason why it’s often referred to as the ‘Land of Terror’. There are no permanent residents that live here, only occasional Tuareg nomads. This image, also featured on the Earth from Space video program, was captured on 12 January 2020 by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) - The barren plain extends to the west of the Hoggar mountains and southeast of the sandy Erg Chech. The terrain shows evidence of water erosion that occurred many years ago, when the Sahara Desert’s climate was much wetter, as well as wind erosion caused by frequent sandstorms – exposing ancient folds in the Paleozoic rocks. - The region is characterized by dark sandstone hills, steep canyon walls, salt flats (visible in white in the image), stone plateaus and seas of multi-storey sand dunes known as ‘ergs’. Concentric rings of exposed sandstone strata create a stunning pattern predominantly visible in the left of the image. - White lines in the right of the image are roads that lead to In Salah – the capital of the In Salah Province and In Salah District. Just above the center-left of the image, an airstrip can be seen. An interesting, grid-like pattern can be seen in the bottom of the image and mostly consists of human-made clearings and roads. • December 18, 2020: The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over Lapland, the largest and northernmost region of Finland, just in time for Christmas. 65) - Located within the Arctic Circle, Lapland, also called Sápmi by the Sami people, stretches across northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, and into the Kola Peninsula of Russia. It is bound by the Norwegian Sea on the west, the Barents Sea on the north, and the White Sea to the east. - Lapland during the winter months means snowfall, temperatures well below zero degrees and the Northern Lights, or the Aurora Borealis, lighting up the dark, night skies. Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland, lies at the top of the image, and is considered the official hometown of Santa Claus. - In Rovaniemi, the Arctic Circle runs through Santa Claus Village, located eight kilometers north of the city center. The Arctic Circle marks the southernmost latitude where the sun can stay continuously below or above the horizon for 24 hours – these phenomena are known as the Midnight Sun in the summer and the Polar Night in the winter. - As an advanced radar mission, Copernicus Sentinel-1 can image the surface of Earth through cloud and rain and regardless of whether it is day or night – making it an ideal mission to monitor areas often shrouded in darkness like the polar regions.
Figure 36: This image combines three radar acquisitions from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission to show changes in land conditions over time. The first image from 28 February 2019 is associated with green, the second from 11 March is linked to red, and the third from 04 April depicts changes in blue. The changes that took place over time in this image are largely seen in the bottom-left of the image, where sea ice in the Gulf of Bothnia has shifted substantially along the coast. The Gulf of Bothnia, the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea, is situated between Finland’s west coast and Sweden’s east coast. As it receives the water of so many rivers, including the Torne and Kemijoki rivers visible in the image, its salinity is extremely low, and ice cover is maintained for up to five months during the winter. There are many small islands, making navigation in the gulf difficult. For this reason, vessels travelling in the gulf receive icebreaker assistance on their journey in the ice-covered waters, and follow the straight lines easing their navigation. Straight lines can be seen coming from the Port of Röyttä and the Port of Ajos. This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video program (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) • December 11, 2020: The giant A-68A iceberg could strike land this month – wreaking havoc near the waters of the South Georgia Island. 66) - Satellite missions are being used to track the berg on its journey over the past three years. The Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission, with its ability to see through clouds and the dark, has been instrumental in mapping the polar regions in winter.
Figure 37: Since its ‘birth’ in 2017, the iceberg has travelled thousands of kilometers from the Larsen C ice shelf, in Antarctica, and now lies around 120 km from South Georgia. If it remains on its current path, the iceberg could ground in the shallow waters offshore – threatening wildlife, including penguins and seals (video credits: Animation: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017-18), processed by Swansea University-A. Luckman; Radar images: contain modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; Sentinel-1 animations: ESA/ATG Medialab) • November 26, 2020: An enormous iceberg, called A-68A, has made headlines over the past weeks as it drifts towards South Georgia in the Southern Ocean. New images, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, show the berg is rotating and potentially drifting westwards.
Figure 38: The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission’s latest acquisition, captured on 25 November, shows the berg’s eastern tip is now just 255 km from South Georgia. If the iceberg were to reach the island’s shores, it could potentially ground in the shallow waters offshore and threaten wildlife, including penguins, seals and krill (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA) - In July 2017, the lump of ice, more than twice the size of Luxembourg, broke off Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf – spawning one of the largest icebergs on record. Now, three years later, the A68A berg is being carried by currents in open waters – thousands of kilometers from its birthplace. - Satellite missions are being used to track the berg on its journey over the past three years. The Sentinel-1 radar mission, with its ability to see through clouds and the dark, has been instrumental in mapping the polar regions in winter. • November 10, 2020: The colossus iceberg that split from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf on 12 July 2017 is on a collision course with South Georgia. 67) - Over the last three years, satellite missions such as Copernicus Sentinel-1 have been used to track the berg as it has drifted in the Southern Ocean. For the first two years, it remained close to its parent ice sheet, impeded by sea ice. But now, as the map shows, the main chunk of the A-68 berg, known as A-68A, is heading rapidly for South Georgia. It is now about 350 km from the island. - About the same size as the South Atlantic island, it could ground in the shallow waters offshore and cause real problems for the island wildlife and seafloor-dwelling life. Penguins and seals need access to the sea to feed so the iceberg could easily block their foraging routes and life on the seafloor could be crushed if the berg grounds. The fear is that if the berg does anchor against the South Georgia coast, it could remain there for up to 10 years. When the A38 grounded here in 2004, many dead penguin chicks and seal pups were found along the shoreline.
Figure 39: The map includes historic iceberg tracks, based on data from a number of satellites including ESA’s ERS-1 and ERS-2 as part of the Antarctic Iceberg Tracking Database, and shows that A-68A is following this well-trodden path. Hopefully, currents will take A-68A around South Georgia and off to the northwest, and eventually break up (image credit: ESA, the map contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017–20), processed by ESA; Antarctic Iceberg Tracking Database) • November 6, 2020: Greece’s largest and most populous island, Crete, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. 68) - Crete extends for approximately 260 km from west to east, and is approximately 60 km across at its widest point. Crete is known for its rugged terrain and is dominated by a high mountain range crossing from west to east. This includes the Lefká Ori, or ‘White Mountains’ in the west, Mount Ida, Crete’s highest mountain, visible in the centre of the island, and the Díkti Mountains in the east. Crete’s capital and largest city of the island, Heraklion, is located along the northern coastline. - Several other smaller islands are dotted around the image, including Gavdos, Chrisi and Dia. - Unbeknown to many, the island of Crete plays an important role in the Copernicus satellite altimetry constellation and on an international stage. Satellite altimetry data have to be continuously monitored at the ESA Permanent Facility for Altimetry Calibration (PFAC) where different techniques have pioneered the use of transponders linked to international metrology standards to provide the best measurements to validate satellite altimeters in space soon after launch. - This PFAC network has been operating for around two decades, with a main calibration validation station located on the island of Gavdos and a dedicated transponder site in the Cretan mountains. A transponder receives, amplifies and re-transmits the radar pulse back to the radar altimeter in space where the signal is recorded. The transponder measurements are used to determine the range and datation of the satellite altimeter data in a unique manner – something that is very difficult to achieve on the ground. - Western Crete was identified as a unique location for the inter-comparison of satellite altimeters owing to its unique positioning of the Copernicus Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-6 orbit crossing points. - The sea surrounding the island has minimal tides, and the rugged mountainous landscape means that the transponder signals can be measured from space with little interference, but most importantly, in the sky above it, a number of satellites in orbit converge. This allows each satellite flying above to be cross-calibrated with the next one at one specific meeting point using the same instrumentation. - The Fiducial Reference Measurements for Sentinel-6 is the latest activity designed to bring the full power of the PFAC to check the performance of the upcoming Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite – the next radar altimetry reference mission extending the legacy of sea-surface height measurements until at least 2030. - Every 10 days, Sentinel-6 will provide sufficient measurements to map the sea-surface height of the ocean from which sea-level rise can be computed. As part of the ESA contribution to the long-term verification and validation of both Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-6 missions, the PFAC is being extended with a second transponder to be installed on Gavdos Island, southwest of Crete, as seen in the Sentinel-1 radar image. This gives the ‘big picture’ allowing us to chart the sea level with confidence.
Figure 40: The two identical Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites carry radar instruments, which can see through clouds and rain, and in the dark, to image Earth’s surface below. The sea surface reflects the radar signal away from the satellite, making water appear dark in the image, while cities on the island are visible in white owing to the strong reflection of the radar signal. This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video program (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) • November 3, 2020: Tiny shifts in the land surface across the whole of Germany have been mapped for the first time, with the help of the Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission. 69) - Land-surface deformation, such as subsidence, often happens because of changes that take place underground such as groundwater extraction, mining, natural consolidation of sediments and rapid urbanization. - This ground motion can be a major threat, in both urban and agricultural areas, where continuous shifts over time can cause, for example, damage to buildings, roads, bridges, dykes and other infrastructure, and can cause changes in the way surface water flows and accumulates – all of which has economic implications. - Urban development projects and risk assessment efforts rely on ground-motion monitoring, which is usually supplied by terrestrial surveying methods. Images from space, however, offer cost-effective, systematic, high-precision measurements over most of Earth’s land surface.
Figure 41: Based on ‘Persistent Scatterer Interferometry’ radar data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, this is the first nationwide map of ground surface deformation. The map shows how the land surface shifted in millimeters a year between 2014 and 2018. The subsidence shown in red is located in the Rheinisches Braukohlerevier (lignite region in the bight of Cologne) in the west of the country due to open pit lignite mining accompanied by groundwater lowering. Blue patches in the adjacent area are likely to be related to the rise of groundwater after mining activities ceased (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2014–18), processed by BGR) • October 23, 2020: Global sea level has been rising at a rate of 3.3 mm per year in the past three decades. The causes are mostly the thermal expansion of warming ocean water and the addition of fresh water from melting ice sheets and glaciers. But even as the sea takes up more space, the elevation of the land is also changing relative to the sea. 70) - What geologists call vertical land motion—or subsidence and uplift—is a key reason why local rates of sea level rise can differ from the global rate. California offers a good example of how much sea level can vary on a local scale. - “There is no one-size-fits-all rule that applies for California,” said Em Blackwell, a graduate student at Arizona State University. Blackwell worked recently with Virginia Tech geophysicist Manoochehr Shirzaei to estimate vertical land motion along California’s coast by analyzing radar measurements made by satellites. The research team—which also included Virginia Tech’s Susanna Werth and Geoscience Australia’s Chandrakanta Ojha—found that up to 8 million Californians live in areas where the land is sinking, including large numbers of people around San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. - Land can rise or fall as a consequence of natural and human-caused processes. Key natural processes include tectonics, glacial isostatic adjustment, sediment loading, and soil compaction, explained Shirzaei. Humans can induce vertical land motion by extracting groundwater and through gas and oil production. - The radar data came from sensors on Japan’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) and Europe’s Sentinel-1A satellite. The researchers also made use of horizontal and vertical velocity data from ground-based receiving stations in the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The InSAR data shown in these maps have an average spatial resolution of 80 meters per pixel, more than one thousand times higher than previous maps based only on GNSS data. - The reasons why land uplifts or subsides in any given area can be complex. Over long time scales and large scales, tectonic plates can shift the land. For instance, in Northern California the subduction of the small Gorda plate beneath the North American plate at the Mendocino Triple Junction causes the crust to thicken and rise a few millimeters per year. But to the south of Cape Mendocino, the tectonic environment is quite different. Instead of one plate diving beneath another and pushing it upward, the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate grind past each other in a north-south direction, which causes significantly less uplift in central and southern California. - Other geologic forces work closer to the surface and over shorter spans of time. In river deltas, bays, valleys, and other areas where sediments pile up, land tends to sink over time from the added weight—a process called sediment loading. It also sinks because particles of sediments get squeezed together and compressed over time, explained Shirzaei, the project lead and a member of NASA’s sea level change science team. In fact, sediment compaction is the main reason that the areas around San Francisco Bay, Monterey Bay, and San Diego Bay have relatively high rates of subsidence. - Human activities tend to have more short-term effects on vertical land motion. One example is the zone of strong uplift around Santa Ana, a valley just south of Los Angeles. That is mainly due to a groundwater management system that has replenished aquifers in recent years, a process that causes uplift. The map indicates one bit of positive news for Los Angeles: uplift along parts of the coast makes much of the city and its coastal suburbs less exposed to flooding hazards caused by increased sea level rise than other major coastal cities. - This picture of vertical land motion (Figure 42) highlights the sea level rise planning and mitigation challenges that communities in many parts of the state face. “The dataset presented here can assist long-term resilience planning that enables coastal communities to choose among a continuum of adaptation strategies to cope with adverse impacts of climate change and sea-level rise,” said Shirzaei.
Figure 42: The map highlights the variability in the rising and falling of land across California’s 1000-mile (1,500 km) coast. Areas shown in blue are subsiding, with darker blue areas sinking faster than lighter blue ones. The areas shown in dark red are rising the fastest. The map was created by comparing thousands of scenes of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data collected between 2007 and 2011 (ALOS) with more collected between 2014 and 2018 (Sentinel-1A). Blackwell and colleagues looked for differences in the data—a processing technique known as interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR). [image credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using data from Blackwell, Em, et al. (2020) and topographic data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Story by Adam Voiland]
Figure 43: In the detailed map of San Francisco, note that the low-lying airport is subsiding. Subsidence is also particularly pronounced on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, which has seen subsidence exceeding 10 mm/year thanks in part to a landfill on the island. The area of uplift east of San Francisco in the Livermore Valley is likely caused by the underground aquifer refilling and rebounding after a long period of drought (image credit: NASA Earth Observatory) • September 29, 2020: Satellite imagery has revealed that two of the fastest-changing glaciers in Antarctica are fracturing and weakening faster than ever – the first step towards the glaciers disintegrating and causing sea levels to rise dramatically. 71) - Using observations from ESA, NASA and USGS satellites, the researchers explored the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment: two of the most dynamic glaciers on the Antarctic continent, and those responsible for a substantial 5% of global sea level rise. 72) - Together, the two glaciers form an area of flowing ice the size of Norway, and hold enough water to raise global sea levels by over a meter. Both have distinctly changed in morphology in recent decades along with changing atmospheric and oceanic conditions, with the warming oceans causing ice shelves to melt, thin, and retreat. - Predicting how these vital glaciers will evolve in coming years is critical to understand the future of our seas and our warming planet – but such predictions have remained uncertain, with computer models unable to fully account for the glaciers’ processes and properties in their projections.
Figure 44: The evolution of damage to the Pine Island (boxes P1 and P2) and Thwaites (T1) Glaciers from October 2014 to July 2020, as seen by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. The ice sheets of both glaciers can be seen fracturing and tearing apart [video credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2014-20), processed by Stef Lhermitte (TU Delft)] - "To reveal what’s really going on at Pine Island and Thwaites, we dug into imaging data from a number of different satellites," says Stef Lhermitte of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and lead author of the new study. - "We found structural damage at the ‘shear margins’ of the glaciers’ ice shelves, where the ice transitions from fast- to slow-moving: large crevasses, rifts and open fractures that indicate that the ice shelves are slowly tearing apart. Currently, the ice shelves are a little like a slow car in traffic: they force anything behind them to slow down. Once they’re removed, ice sitting further inland will be able to speed up, which in turn will cause sea levels to rise even faster." - Such crevasses were not seen in imagery from 1997, and damage appeared far less prevalent in imagery from 2016, demonstrating that the deterioration accelerated over the past two decades and has grown significantly worse in the last few years. - Lhermitte and colleagues tracked how the damaged areas had developed from 1997–2019, how the glacier and ice shelf elevation had changed over this time, and the velocity of moving ice using data from ESA’s Earth Explorer CryoSat mission, the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, the NASA/USGS Landsat program, and the Japanese ASTER instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite. They then modelled the potential impact of the damaged shear margins, with worrying results. - "This fracturing appears to kick off a feedback process – it preconditions the ice shelves to disintegrate,” explains co-author Thomas Nagler of ENVEO in Innsbruck, Austria. “As the glaciers fracture at their weak points this damage speeds up, spreads, and weakens more of the ice shelves, causing further deterioration – and making it more likely that the shelves will start crumbling apart even faster."
Figure 45: Rift evolution across the ice tongue – a long, narrow ice sheet extending seaward – of Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier (PIG) in September and October of 2018, as seen by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. The video shows the emergence of an ice sheet rift in a region that was previously stable [image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by Stef Lhermitte (TU Delft)] - As the ice shelves become increasingly damaged, the glaciers lose mass and their ‘grounding lines’ – the region where ice sheets become buoyant enough to detach from the seafloor and float – retreat. Overall, damage feedback processes appear to be a key factor in the future stability of Antarctica’s ice shelves, and, in turn, in how fast the continent’s glaciers melt and cause global sea levels to rise. - "The results from this study highlight a pressing need to include such feedback processes in model projections of ice shelf retreat, ice sheet mass loss, and sea level change,” adds Mark Drinkwater, ESA’s Mission Scientist for CryoSat, and Senior Advisor on polar and cryosphere science. - "We know that a significant amount of glacial ice in West Antarctica is currently being affected by climate change – in fact, a recent study found 24% of this ice to be rapidly thinning and unstable. These new results underline just how quickly this damage is occurring, and reveal that Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers are more vulnerable than ever before." - ESA research into Antarctic glaciers is continuing as part of the ESA POLAR+ Ice Shelves project, which kicked off in September 2020. With the collaboration of ENVEO and under the lead of Anna Hogg (University of Leeds, UK), the project's international team will further improve methods for monitoring the fracturing and damage of ice shelves. The project will generate a suite of Earth Observation datasets with which to characterize how ice shelves in Antarctica have changed over the last decade, and investigate the physical processes driving this evolution. • September 11, 2020: This image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, shows the Amazon River meandering through one of the most vital ecosystems in the world – the Amazon rainforest in South America. 73) - The Amazon is considered the widest river in the world with a width of between 1.6 and 10 km, but expands during the wet season to around 50 km. With more than 1000 tributaries, the Amazon River is the largest drainage system in the world in terms of the volume of its flow and the area of its basin. As a consequence of its ever-changing flow, older riverbeds can be seen as thin lines around the main river at the top of the image. - One of its tributaries, the Javari River, or Yavari River, is visible as a thinner blue line weaving through the tropical rainforest. The river flows for 870 km, forming the border between Brazil and Peru, before joining the Amazon River. - In the image, cities and built-up areas are visible in cyan, for example the cities of Tabatinga and Leticia with two airports are easily identifiable in the far-right. The yellow and orange colors in the image show the surrounding Amazon forest. - The colors of this week’s image come from the combination of two polarizations from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission, which have been converted into a single image. - As radar images provide data in a different way than a normal optical camera, the images are usually black and white when they are received. By using a technology that aligns the radar beams sent and received by the instrument in one orientation – either vertically or horizontally – the resulting data can be processed in a way that produces colored images such as the one featured here. This technique allows for a better distinction of features on the ground.
Figure 46: This Sentinel-1 image has been processed in a way that shows water bodies, such as the Amazon River, in blue. The Amazon river begins its journey in the Andes and makes its way east through six South American countries before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean on the northeast coast of Brazil. The river has a length of around 6400 km – the equivalent of the distance from New York City to Rome. This image, acquired on 3 March 2019, is also featured on the Earth from Space video program (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) • August 11, 2020: On August 4, 2020, a devastating explosion rocked the port area around Beirut, Lebanon. After the event, scientists used satellite radar imagery to map the extent of the damage and help identify areas where people may need assistance. 74) - According to the Associated Press, a fire near the port ignited a large nearby store of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive chemical often used in fertilizer. At least 135 people died, about 5,000 were wounded, and at least 300,000 people were left homeless. Losses from the blast are estimated to be at least $10 to $15 billion, according to news reports. - The team at ARIA (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and EOS examined synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data collected before and after the explosion, mapping changes in the land surface and built structures. SAR instruments send pulses of microwaves toward Earth’s surface and listen for the reflections of those waves. The radar waves can penetrate cloud cover, vegetation, and the dark of night to detect changes that might not show up in visible light imagery. When Earth’ crust moves due to an earthquake, when dry land is suddenly covered by flood water, or when buildings have been damaged or toppled, the amplitude and phase of radar wave reflections changes in those areas and indicates to the satellite that something on the ground has changed. - Though other U.S. and international agencies play more immediate roles in response to disasters, NASA plays a role in providing observations and analysis. Over the past decade, NASA has actively built its capacity to share Earth observations that can improve the prediction of, preparation for, response to, and recovery from natural and technological disasters. For instance, NASA often responds to calls for data and imagery from the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters. - “We look at areas of likely exposed populations and fragile infrastructure, as well as areas subject to social stresses and crises. We model and map risks, while also tracking emissions, debris, infrastructure damage, and other effects from things like volcanic eruptions, fires, industrial accidents, earthquakes, and floods,” said David Green, head of NASA’s Disasters Applications team. “Our observations and analyses can help our partners increase their situational awareness of systemic risks and of real-time events, leading to better-informed decisions and early action.”
Figure 47: This image is a damage proxy map created by scientists affiliated with NASA’s Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team and the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS). Dark red pixels represent the most severe damage, while orange and yellow areas are moderately or partially damaged. Each colored pixel represents an area of 30 m2 (about the size of a baseball diamond), [image credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020) processed by ESA and analyzed by Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) in collaboration with NASA-JPL and Caltech, Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data from OpenStreetMap. Story by Esprit Smith, NASA's Earth Science News Team, and Michael Carlowicz] • August 8, 2020: NASA's Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team, in collaboration with the Earth Observatory of Singapore, used satellite-derived synthetic aperture radar data to map the likely extent of damage from a massive August 4 explosion in Beirut. Synthetic aperture radar data from space shows ground surface changes from before and after a major event like an earthquake. In this case, it is being used to show the devastating result of an explosion. 75) - Maps like the one of Figure 48 can help identify badly damaged areas where people may need assistance. The explosion occurred near the city's port. It claimed more than 150 lives and is estimated to have caused billions of dollars' worth of damage.
Figure 48: The map contains modified Copernicus Sentinel-1 data processed by ESA (European Space Agency) and analyzed by ARIA team scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, and Earth Observatory of Singapore. Based in Pasadena, California, Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The ARIA team used satellite data to map the extent of likely damage following a massive explosion in Beirut. Dark red pixels represent the most severe damage. Areas in orange are moderately damaged, and areas in yellow are likely to have sustained somewhat less damage. Each colored pixel represents an area of 30 meters (image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Earth Observatory of Singapore/ESA) • July 24, 2020: The Falkland Islands are featured in this radar image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. The Falkland Islands lie in the South Atlantic Ocean, around 500 km northeast of the southern tip of South America. The Falklands comprise two main islands, West Falkland and East Falkland, as well as hundreds of other smaller islands and islets, which form a total land area approximately five times the size of Luxembourg. The two main islands are separated by the Falkland Sound, a channel that averages around 20 km in width. 76) - The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission provides a continuous sampling of the seas, offering information on wind and waves. This is useful for understanding interactions between waves and currents and to improve efficiency for shipping and wave-energy applications, potentially producing economic benefits. - The landscape of the Falkland Islands comprises mountain ranges, flat plains, rugged coastline and cliffs. Hills run east-west across the northern parts of the two main islands, with the highest point being Mount Usborne on East Falkland (around 700 m). Two inlets, Berkeley Sound and Port William, visible in the far right of the image, run far into the land and provide anchorage for shipping. The majority of the population of the islands live in Stanley, on East Falkland. - The islands are covered with grasslands, but not trees, which are widely used as pastureland for sheep and cattle. The islands are also an important habitat and breeding grounds for birds, penguins and seals.
Figure 49: This multi-temporal image combines two radar acquisitions from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission taken one month apart to show changes over time. The first image was captured on 29 December 2019, while the second was taken on 22 January 2020. Here, the main changes between acquisitions occurred in the open ocean, with the bright red colors showing wavy waters in December 2019. This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video program (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019-20), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) • July 23, 2020: On the morning of 23 June 2020, a strong earthquake struck the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The 7.4 magnitude earthquake prompted evacuations in the region, triggered a tsunami warning and damaged thousands of houses. Satellite radar data, from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, are being used to analyze the effects of the earthquake on land. 77) - Mexico is one of the world’s most seismically active regions, sitting on top of three of Earth’s largest tectonic plates – the North American, Cocos and Pacific. Near Mexico’s southern region, the North American plate collides with the Cocos plate, which is forced underground in a subduction zone. This geological process is associated with many of the damaging earthquakes on the Pacific coast of Mexico – including the most recent on 23 June. - The earthquake reported in the Oaxaca region occurred at 10:29 local time – with its epicenter located around 12 km southwest of Santa María Zapotitlán. Several powerful aftershocks were registered the same day, with five more recorded in the following 24 hours. - While there is currently no way to predict when earthquakes will occur, radar imagery from satellites allow for the effects of earthquakes to be observed. Since its launch, the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission has proven a magnificent system to measure the surface deformation caused by tectonics, volcanic eruptions and land subsidence. - In the maps of Figure 50, data from the Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B satellite, acquired shortly before and after the earthquake, have been combined to measure the coseismic surface displacement, or changes on the ground, that occurred between the two acquisition dates. This leads to the colorful interference (or fringe) pattern known as an ‘interferogram’, which enables scientists to quantify the surface displacement.
Figure 50: Interferogram showing the coseismic surface displacement in the area of Oaxaca, Mexico, generated from multiple Sentinel-1 scans – before and after the 23 June earthquake. By combining data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, acquired before and after the earthquake, changes on the ground that occurred between the two acquisition dates lead to the colorful interference patterns in the images, known as an 'interferogram', enabling scientists to quantify the ground movement (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) - Ramón Torres, Copernicus Sentinel-1 Project Manager, explains, “The interferogram represents surface displacement in the radar line of sight, i.e. half of the radar wavelength. The distance between the interference cycle, from yellow to yellow, corresponds to 28 mm deformation in the radar line of sight. For example, a blue-green-red color cycle represents a relative movement towards the radar, while a red-green-blue color cycle means a deformation away from the radar.” - “The fringes can be unwrapped to allow the conversion into meters. The result, referred to as the surface displacement map (Figure 51), shows the relative deformation caused by the earthquake.” - In the Oaxaca images, ground deformation of up to 0.45 m was observed in the coastal city of La Crucecita – where the epicenter was located. - With its 250 km-wide swath over land surfaces, the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission gives scientists a broad view of the displacement, allowing them to examine the ground displacement and further develop the scientific knowledge of quakes. - By benefitting from the availability of both Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B imagery, scientists are able to quantify the ground movement in both vertical and east-west directions by combing the radar scans obtained as the satellites flew both south to north and north to south. - While current radar missions are limited in measuring the east-west component of surface displacement, the proposed Earth Explorer candidate mission, Harmony, will augment the capabilities by adding additional ‘lines of sight’ to the Sentinel-1 mission. - In areas where the displacement is predominantly in the north-south direction, Harmony will have the ability to systematically and accurately measure an additional dimension of displacement. This will help resolve ambiguities in the underlying geophysical processes that lead to earthquakes, landslides and volcanism. - Looking to the future, the upcoming six high-priority candidate missions will expand the current capabilities of the Sentinel missions, one of them being the L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar, ROSE-L, mission, which will also augment the current capabilities of Sentinel-1. The mission will allow scientists to further improve the mapping of earthquakes over the next decade. - Ramón Torres says, “The Sentinel-1 services are very well guaranteed for decades to come. The upcoming Sentinel-1C and Sentinel-1D are in the process of being completed, and the design of the next generation of satellites will begin later this year.”
Figure 51: Surface deformation. Displacement measured in the radar line of sight from the descending (top) and ascending (bottom) passes (image credit: ESA, the maps contain modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) • July 10, 2020: The colossus iceberg that split from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf on 12 July 2017 is now in the open waters of the South Atlantic near the South Orkney Islands, about 1050 km from its birthplace. Having lost two chunks of ice, this record berg is a little less huge than it once was – and now that it is in rougher waters, it may break up further. 78) - When it calved, A-68 was about twice the size of Luxemburg and one of the largest icebergs on record, changing the outline of the Antarctic Peninsula forever. Despite its size, however, it is remarkably thin, just a couple of hundred meters thick. - Over the last three years, satellite missions such as Copernicus Sentinel-1 have been used to track the berg as it drifted in the Southern Ocean. For the first two years, it remained close to its parent ice sheet, impeded by sea ice. - However, it lost a chunk of ice almost immediately after being calved, resulting in it being renamed A-68A, and its offspring became A-68B. More recently, in April 2020, A-68A lost another chunk: A-68C. - Rather unromantically, Antarctic icebergs are named from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, then a sequential number, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter. - Although A-68A is a relatively thin iceberg, it has held together reasonably well, but satellites will be key to monitoring how it changes in open waters. - Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission, the image of Figure 52 shows the berg on 5 July 2020, a few days before its third birthday. Satellites carrying radar continue to deliver images regardless of the dark and bad weather, which is indispensable when monitoring the remote polar regions which are shrouded in darkness during the winter months.
Figure 52: A huge iceberg called A-68 calved from the Antarctic Peninsula’s Larsen C ice shelf on 12 July 2017. Three years on, it is in open waters near the South Orkney Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean – about 1050 km from its birthplace. The berg has already lost two chunks of ice, which were big enough to be given names: A-68B and A68C. Copernicus Sentinel-1 captured this image of the parent berg, A-68A, on 5 July 2020 (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) - The map (Figure 53) shows the different positions of A-68A during its three-year journey. The map not only highlights how long it remained close to the Larsen C ice sheet, but how, over the last year or so, its pace of drift has increased considerably.
Figure 53: A huge iceberg called A68 calved from the Antarctic Peninsula’s Larsen C ice shelf on 12 July 2017. It is now in open waters near the South Orkney Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean – about 1050 km from its birthplace. The map shows the different positions of the berg during its three-year journey. However, A-68 is now called A-68A as it has lost two chunks of ice, one in July 2017 named A-68B, and one in April 2020 named A-68C. The map also highlights that during its first two years of freedom A-68 drifted slowly, impeded by sea ice. Now that it is in relatively open waters, the pace of this parent iceberg has increased. The map also includes historic iceberg tracks, based on data from a number of satellites including ESA’s ERS-1 and ERS-2 as part of the Antarctic Iceberg Tracking Database, and shows that A-68A is following this well-trodden path (image credit: ESA, the map contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017–20), processed by ESA; Antarctic Iceberg Tracking Database) - The wider-view image of Figure 54 from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission shows A-68A’s position in February 2020.
Figure 54: A huge iceberg called A68 calved from the Antarctic Peninsula’s Larsen C ice shelf on 12 July 2017. This image, which was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, shows its position on 9 February 2020. The berg is now known as A-68A after losing two chunks of ice: A-68B and A-68C. Antarctic icebergs are named from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, then a sequential number, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) • July 10, 2020: The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over the busy maritime traffic in the Bay of Naples, in southern Italy. 79) - The two identical Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites carry radar instruments to provide an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface. Here, three years of Sentinel-1 data over the same area, equal to hundreds of images, have been compressed into a single image. - Many large vessels depart from the Port of Naples, one of the largest Italian seaports visible in the top-center of the image. From here, and the smaller Port of Pozzuoli in the left of the image, small leisure boats and ferries set sail to the nearby islands. Ischia, renowned for its thermal springs, and Procida are visible in the left of the image, in front of Pozzuoli, while the beautiful island of Capri is visible further south. - Numerous boats are anchored off the island of Capri in the bottom center of the image. The island lies opposite the Sorrento peninsula, to which it was joined in prehistoric times. Two indentations can be seen in its cliff-lined coast: the Marina Grande on the north shore and the Marina Piccola on the south shore. - Other vessels are docked off the coast of Sorrento, as well as off of the Amalfi coast in the right of the image. - The Bay of Naples is famous for its scenic beauty, including the steep, volcanic hills surrounding it. The still-active Mount Vesuvius can be seen just inland from the bay, as a circular shape. Cities, such as Naples, as well as the other surrounding towns, are visible in white owing to the strong reflection of the radar signal.
Figure 55: The sea surface reflects the radar signal away from the satellite, and makes water appear dark in the image. This contrasts with metal objects, in this case the ships in the bay, which appear as bright dots in the dark waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Boats crossing the bay in 2017 appear in blue, those from 2018 appear in green, and those from 2019 can be seen in red. This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video program (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017-19), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) • April 30, 2020: The notion that rain could lead to a volcanic eruption may seem strange, but scientists from the University of Miami in the USA, have used information from satellites, including the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, to discover that a period of heavy rainfall may have triggered the four month-long eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano in 2018. 80)
Figure 56: The eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano in 2018 was one of the most destructive in this volcano’s recorded history. Why this happened has remained a mystery until a paper published recently in Nature suggests that rainfall could have been the culprit (image credit: U.S. Geological Survey) - Producing about 320,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of lava that reshaped the landscape, destroyed hundreds of homes and caused the collapse of the summit caldera, the 2018 eruption was one of the most destructive in Kilauea’s recorded history.
Figure 57: Restless Kilauea. Fiery lava continues to pour from the Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island. These Copernicus Sentinel-2 images from 23 May, 7 June and 12 June 2018 show the relentless flow of lava and clouds of ash. This is an update of the Hawaii lava flow animation published on 8 June. The eruption, which began in early May, has destroyed more than 600 homes, spread lava over more than 800 ha of land and opened up at least 22 fissures in the ground, according to Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim. Although this eruption has produced slow-moving lava, which has allowed people to evacuate, it is reported to be the most destructive eruption in the U.S. since that of Mount St. Helen’s in May 1980 (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) - A paper published recently in Nature proposes a new model to explain why this eruption happened. The authors, Jamie Farquharson and Falk Amelung from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science, suggest that heavy rainfall may have been the culprit. 81) - In the months before the eruption, Hawaii was inundated by an unusually prolonged period of heavy, and at times extreme, rainfall. - The rainwater would have found its way through the pores of the volcanic rock and increased the pressure within – decreasing the rigidity of the rock and allowing magma to rise to the surface. - Falk Amelung said, “We knew that changes in the water content in the Earth's subsurface can trigger earthquakes and landslides. Now we know that it can also trigger volcanic eruptions. Under pressure from magma, wet rock breaks easier than dry rock. It is as simple as that.” - Using a combination of ground-based and satellite measurements of rainfall, Farquharson and Amelung modelled the fluid pressure within the volcano's edifice over time – a factor that can directly influence the tendency for mechanical failure in the ground, ultimately driving volcanic activity.
Figure 58: Pre-eruption ground deformation around Kilauea Volcano (red triangle) in Hawaii. The map was derived from Copernicus Sentinel-1 data between December 2014 and June 2017 (image credit: J. Farquharson/F. Amelung) - This is not an entirely new theory, but it was previously thought that this could only happen at shallow depths. Here, the scientists conclude that the rain increased pore pressure deep down – at depths of up to 3 km. - The team’s results highlight that fluid pressure was at its highest in almost half a century immediately prior to the eruption, which they propose facilitated magma movement beneath the volcano. Their hypothesis also explains why there was relatively little widespread uplift around the volcano in the months prior. - “We would normally see the ground inflate, or ‘uplift’ before an eruption as the magma chamber swells. We used radar information from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission to see that the amount of inflation was low. - “This lack of substantial inflation suggests that the intrusion–eruption could not only have been triggered by an influx of fresh magma from depth, but that it was caused by a weakening of the rift zone. The six-day repeat observations from the Sentinel-1 mission were key to our research. - “A fact that must be considered when assessing volcanic hazards is that increasing extreme weather patterns associated with ongoing anthropogenic climate change could also increase the potential for rainfall-triggered volcanic activity.” - The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission is a constellation of two identical radar satellites offering the capability to monitor ground deformation with the technique of interferometry. The constellation provides the capability to image part of the globe in the same geometry every six days – a repeat that is ensured for the Group on Earth Observation’s Geohazard Supersites, to which Hawaii islands belong.
Figure 59: Sentinel-1 delivers radar imagery for numerous applications. Radar images are the best way of tracking land subsidence and structural damage. Systematic observations mean that ground movement barely noticeable in everyday life can be detected and closely monitored. As well as being a valuable resource for urban planners, this kind of information is essential for monitoring shifts from earthquakes, landslides and volcanic uplift. Moreover, Sentinel-1 is designed specifically to provide images for rapid response to disasters such as floods and earthquakes. — Images acquired over the ocean are essential for generating timely maps of sea ice for safe passage as well as for detecting and tracking oil spills. The mission also offers key information on wind and waves in the open sea for shipping and wave-energy applications (video credit: ESA/ATG medialab) • March 27, 2020: The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over part of the Mekong Delta – a major rice-producing region in southwest Vietnam. 82) - In Vietnam, rice has been a strategic crop for national food security. Vietnam is the fifth largest producer of rice in the world, the majority of which is grown in the Mekong Delta – a vast flood plain and one of Asia’s most fertile agricultural zones. - Such an enormous amount of rice is produced in the Mekong Delta that it is often referred to as Vietnam's 'rice bowl'. The rice grown here produces enough to make Vietnam the world's third biggest rice exporter – after India and Thailand. - Bodies of water reflect the radar signal away from the satellite, making water appear dark. This can be seen in the Bassac River, also known as the Hau river, in the right of the image. Ships in the river can be seen as bright, multi-colored dots. - The combination of radar images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission can help monitor and map the evolution of rice cultivation. Radar sensors are particularly useful owing to their ability to detect waterlogged ground and penetrate the humid cloud coverage typical of Asian rice-cultivating regions.
Figure 60: This multi-temporal image combines three radar acquisitions from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission taken around one month apart to show changes in crop and land conditions over time. The bright colors in the image come from changes on the ground that have occurred between acquisitions. The first image, from 28 October 2019, picks out changes in pink and red, the second from 21 November shows changes in green, and the third image, from 27 December, shows changes in blue. As seen in the image, the majority of growth in the rice fields is visible in December. The grey areas represent either built-up areas or patches of land that saw no changes during this time. This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video program (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) • February 21, 2020: In this week's edition of the Earth from Space program, the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over Houston, the most populous city in Texas and the fourth largest in the US. 83) - The two identical Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites carry radar instruments to image Earth’s surface. Images acquired with radar are interpreted by studying the intensity of the signal scattered back to the satellite – which is related to the roughness of the ground. - The colors of this week’s image come from the combination of two polarizations from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission, which have been converted into a single RGB image (Figure 61). Interpreting polarization can help scientists analyze Earth’s surface. - With a population of over two million and covering an area of over 1600 km2, Houston is the state’s most populous city and the fourth largest city in the US. - Houston is dissected by a series of bayous passing. Buffalo Bayou can be seen cutting through Houston, before joining Galveston Bay visible at the bottom of the image. Galveston Bay is around 55 km long and around 30 km wide, making it the largest estuary in Texas. The shallow bay has an average depth of around 2 m, which is unusually shallow for its size. - The Port of Houston, which spreads across the northwest section of the bay, is one of the world’s largest ports, and many ships can be seen as multi colored dots in the bottom-right of the image. - Houston is home to the NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC), which lies west of Galveston Bay. The center acts as NASA’s lead center for astronaut training as well as the International Space Station mission operations. It was identified as mission control or simply ‘Houston’ during the Apollo, Gemini and Space Shuttle flights. - The center also collaborates with other international facilities in a variety of scientific and engineering programs related to human space flight and planetary exploration. The Johnson Space Center is where many ESA astronauts are sent as part of their training and preparation for future space missions. This is where Luca Parmitano, who recently returned to Earth, trained for his Beyond mission to the International Space Station.
Figure 61: In this composite image, captured on 21 June 2019, the city of Houston appears in shades of white and grey which contrasts with the yellow tones of the surrounding land and the dark blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. This image is also available in the Earth from Space video program (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) • February 11, 2020: As anticipated, Pine Island Glacier, known as PIG for short, in Antarctica has just spawned a huge iceberg. At over 300 sq km, about the size of Malta, this huge berg very quickly broke into many ‘piglet’ pieces the largest of which is dubbed B-49. 84)
Figure 62: Thanks to images the Copernicus Sentinel satellite missions, two large rifts in the glacier were spotted last year and scientists have been keeping a close eye on how quickly these cracks were growing. This animation uses 57 radar images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission between February 2019 and February 2020 (the last frame is from today, 11 February 2020) and shows just how quickly the emerging cracks grew and led to this calving event (video credit: ESA, the video contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019-20), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) - Pine Island Glacier, along with its neighbor Thwaites Glacier, connect the center of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet with the ocean – together discharging significant quantities of ice into the ocean. These two glaciers have been losing ice over the last 25 years. Owing to their extremely remote location, satellites play a critical role in measuring and monitoring Antarctic glaciology – revealing the timing and pace of glacial retreat in Antarctica. Since the early 1990s, the Pine Island Glacier’s ice velocity has increased dramatically to values which exceed 10 m a day. Its floating ice front, which has an average thickness of approximately 500 meters, has experienced a series of calving events over the past 30 years, some of which have abruptly changed the shape and position of the ice front. - These changes have been mapped by ESA-built satellites since the 1990s, with calving events occurring in 1992, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2018, and now 2020. - Mark Drinkwater, senior scientist and cryosphere specialist remarked, “The Copernicus twin Sentinel-1 all-weather satellites have established a porthole through which the public can watch events like this unfold in remote regions around the world. What is unsettling is that the daily data stream reveals the dramatic pace at which climate is redefining the face of Antarctica.” • February 7, 2020: The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over part of the Dutch province of Flevoland – the newest province in the Netherlands and one of the largest land reclamation projects in the world. 85) - With almost a third of the country lying below sea level, the Netherlands is famously known as a ‘low country,’ and has a long history of land reclamation. - One reclamation project resulted in Flevoland. After a major flood it was decided to tame the Zuiderzee, a large, shallow inlet of the North Sea, to improve flood protection and also create additional land for agricultural use. - The project entailed the creation of land known as polders. The ‘Noordoostpolder,’ or the Northeast polder is the focus of this image. Over the years, the region has developed to become a home to a modern and innovative agricultural industry. The province produces predominantly apples, cereals, potatoes and flowers – with each colorful patch in the image representing a different crop. - Along the dikes of the Ijsselmeer, west of the Noordoostpolder, lies one of the largest wind farms in the Netherlands. The strong, almost star-shaped, reflections that can be seen near the shore are around 86 wind turbines. The wind farm is said to generate approximately 1.4 billion kWh of clean renewable energy per year – comparable to the power consumption of over 400,000 households. - Images acquired with radar are interpreted by studying the intensity of the backscatter radar signal, which is related to the roughness of the ground. Cities and towns are visible in white owing to the stronger reflection of the signal. Emmeloord can be seen in the center of the Noordoostpolder, as well as several farms that appear as bright white dots along the roads.
Figure 63: This image combines three radar acquisitions from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission taken about two months apart to show change in crop and land conditions over time. The first image from 8 May 2018 is associated with red, the second from 7 July depicts changes in green, and the third from 5 September has been linked to blue. This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video program (image credit: ESA, the image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA) • January 15, 2020: Since a magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck Puerto Rico last week, aftershocks near its southwestern coast have been relentless. The frequency and intensity of the aftershocks continue to cause damage on this already-vulnerable part of the island. 86) - NASA scientists are helping local and federal agencies assess the extent of that damage. Using synthetic aperture radar data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech in Pasadena, California, created a new damage map that includes the southwestern coast near the main quake's epicenter. - The ARIA team compared post-quake satellite data acquired on 14 January with data as far back as September 2019 to produce the map. The color variation from yellow to dark red indicates increasingly significant damage. Their analysis shows that Guanica, west of the city of Ponce, was particularly hard hit. - The NASA Earth Applied Sciences Disasters Program has activated a Tier 1 response in support of this disaster and has been in contact with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the United States Geological Survey, Health and Human Services and other agencies to provide NASA Earth-observing data in support of response and recovery efforts. A webpage has also been created on the NASA Disasters Mapping Portal to supply relevant geographic information system (GIS) data products.
Figure 64: The map covers an area of 107 by 47 miles (172 x 76 km), shown with the large red polygon, with each pixel measuring about 30 m across. The data is most sensitive to building damage rather than small scale changes or partial structural damage. It is also less reliable over heavy vegetation. Even with these limitations, the map can still serve an important role in identifying the areas that may need help the most (image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, ESA, The map contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data processed by ESA and analyzed by ARIA team scientists at NASA JPL and Caltech) • January 10, 2020: Scientists use satellite data to help response agencies identify damaged areas. Days after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked Puerto Rico, followed by hundreds of aftershocks, the full extent of damage is only beginning to be realized. 87) - NASA scientists are using satellite data to help federal and local agencies identify areas with potential damage. Earthquakes cause permanent changes to the ground surface. By comparing interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data acquired on Jan. 9, 2020, with data acquired on Dec. 28, 2019, from the Copernicus Sentinel-1A satellite, the scientists were able to map where, how much and in what direction those changes occurred. - Managed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Copernicus Sentinel-1A satellite was able to see the eastern two-thirds of the island during the January 9 flyover. On the map (Figure 65), red indicates areas where the ground was changed, or displaced, with darker shades corresponding to more significant displacement. The scientists found that the greatest displacement from the flyover area occurred west of the city of Ponce (identified by the green star), not far from the quake's offshore epicenter. They recorded up to 14 cm of ground change there. The ground appeared to shift downward and slightly to the west. - The quake epicenter and the cluster of quakes and aftershocks in the region identified by the United States Geological Survey (shown as orange circles) fall just west of the satellite's Jan. 9 track. Because of this, scientists also plan to analyze data from Sentinel-1A's forthcoming Jan. 14 flyover, which will include western Puerto Rico. - The NASA Earth Applied Sciences Disasters Program has activated Tier 1 response in support of this disaster and is in contact with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the United States Geological Survey and Health and Human Services (HHS) to provide NASA Earth-observing data in support of response and recovery efforts. Products in the process of being produced include Suomi-NPP-based "Black Marble" power outage maps, damage maps, and landslide maps. A webpage has also been created on the NASA Disasters Mapping Portal to supply relevant GIS data products. - The map contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data processed by ESA and analyzed by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and earthquake location data from the USGS.
Figure 65: This map shows ground changes, or displacement, on the eastern two-thirds of Puerto Rico following a 6.4-magnitude earthquake. The ground shifted up to 5.5 inches (14 cm) in a downward and slightly west direction (image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, ESA, USGS) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
