ollowing the successful Seasat project in 1978, the European Space Agency used advanced microwave radar techniques on the European Remote Sensing satellites ERS-1 (1991) and ERS-2 (1995) to provide global and repetitive observations, irrespective of cloud or sunlight conditions, for the scientific study of the Earth’s environment. The ERS synthetic aperture radars (SARs) demonstrated for the fi...

The paper describes a new retrieval technique for analysing MIPAS spectra based on (a) using a spectrally-averaged radiance, effectively synthesising a filter radiometer, and (b) using a band-averaged forward model, both of which represent significant differences from the approaches used by other groups (ie using measurements at their full spectral sampling and monochromatic forward models). Th...

Two-dimensional ocean wave spectra are measured from ENVISAT ASAR wave mode cross spectra on a global scale. The measurement is performed using a parametric retrieval scheme, which makes use of prior information taken from numerical wave models. The Partition Rescale and Shift algorithm (PARSA) is based on a partitioning technique, which splits an a prior wave spectrum into its wave system comp...

The aim of this paper is to assess the change detector r specifically elaborated to analyse ENVISAT ASAR Wide Swath Mode (WSM) data pairs for plain flood changes detection. The algorithm relies on an enhanced ratio for strong changes over large homogeneous and flat areas combined with a ratio calculated from the two raw images. The change detection assessment was conducted on 14 image pairs exp...

Since its launch in March 2002, the highly successful ENVISAT mission has provided valuable support to Europe’s Earth Observation research giving long term continuity of science return and contributed to several disaster monitoring campaigns. This paper presents the operational status of the Envisat payload, comprised of 10 multi-disciplinary earth observation instruments, after more than five ...

A parametric algorithm is presented to estimate two-dimensional ocean wave spectra from ENVISAT ASAR wave mode data on a global scale. The retrieval scheme makes use of prior information taken from numerical wave models. The Partition Rescale and Shift algorithm (PARSA) is based on a partitioning technique, which splits an a priori wave spectrum into its wave system components. Integral paramet...

During ERS-1 and ERS-2 missions, the application of synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) become known as a very important method for topographic mapping and high accuracy surface displacement measurements. Further investigations, however, showed that expected accuracy couldn’t be achieved. It appeared that radiowave propagation through the atmosphere causes significant distortion to ...

Two-dimensional ocean wave spectra are measured from ENVISAT ASAR wave mode cross spectra on a global scale. The measurement is performed using a parametric retrieval scheme, which makes use of prior information taken from numerical wave models. The Partition Rescale and Shift algorithm (PARSA) is based on a partitioning technique, which splits an a prior wave spectrum into its wave system comp...

Data from four satellite altimeters are combined with the aim of improving the representation of the mesoscale variability in the Global Ocean. All missions [Jason-1, ERS-2/ENVISAT, Topex/Poseidon interleaved with Jason-1 and Geosat Follow-On] are cross-calibrated previously to produce weekly gridded maps. In areas of intense variability, the rms differences between a classical configuration of...