Aqua MODIS, also known as the MODIS Flight Model 1 (FM1), was launched on May 4, 2002. It opened its nadir aperture door (NAD) on June 24, 2002, beginning its Earth observing mission. In this paper, we present early results from Aqua MODIS on-orbit calibration and characterization and assess the instrument s overall performance. MODIS has 36 spectral bands located on four focal plane assemblies...

RESUME.L’été 2003 a été le plus chaud que la France ait connu depuis 53ans. Suite à un bilan dramatique, cette canicule fut placée parmi les plus graves catastrophes sanitaires. Elle a conduit à anticiper ce type de crise. La connaissance sur le phénomène de la canicule nécessite de mettre en relation spatialement et temporellement l’ensemble des prévisions de météorologies. Dans les zones urba...

In the spirit of productive scientific discussion we would like to start by thanking Faltus and Storz [1] for their comments. We have studied them carefully and would like to add the following comments from our perspective: 1. Faltus and Storz were correct in stating that the German Embryo Protection Act (Embryonenschutzgesetz, ESchG) and the expansion of some of its points in the German Preimp...

Cities impact both local climate, through urban heat islands and global climate, because they are an area of heavy greenhouse gas release into the atmosphere due to heating, air conditioning and traffic. Including more vegetation into cities is a planning strategy having possible positive impacts for both concerns. Improving vegetation representation into urban models will allow us to address m...