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Observation from satellite missions play a crucial role in monitoring climate change by providing comprehensive and continuous observations of Earth system components

NCEO scientists are involved with several upcoming satellite missions as Mission Advisory Group members where they have a leading or collaborative role in mission conception, developing sensor properties, system analysis, data analysis, modelling, algorithm development or validation activities.  
 
Follow the links below to learn more about NCEO’s role in the ongoing or upcoming missions: 

BIOMASS

Mission Summary 

The ESA BIOMASS mission will measure the height and biomass of forests and will also generate 3D maps of forests using radar. Data from the BIOMASS mission, will give us an accurate assessment of how much wood is in these forests and hence how their changes affect the climate.  

Biomass will be the first satellite to carry a P-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), providing improved measurements of forest height and biomass. This includes boreal, tropical, temperate and mangrove forests, as well as plantations. These data will also allow:  

  • Mapping of sub-surface geology 
  • Measuring topography under dense vegetation 
  • Estimating glacier and icesheet velocities 

Biomass will provide measurements of above ground biomass and canopy height at 200m resolution, and areas of forest clearing at 50m resolution. 

At COP26 in 2021, more than 100 leaders committed to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. Scheduled for launch in 2024, the BIOMASS mission will demonstrate how we can measure these changes in stored carbon in the lead-up to 2030. 

The Biomass mission will increase the accuracy of estimates of carbon stored in forests, information essential for the global stocktake, which allows countries to observe their progress towards the Paris Agreement. 

‘The BIOMASS mission is set to fundamentally change our understanding of the Earth’s carbon balance and, as a result, climate change

Professor Shaun Quegan, BIOMASS Mission Lead Scientist, University of Sheffield and NCEO. 

NCEO’s role in the mission 

Professor Shaun Quegan, University of Sheffield and NCEO, conceived the concept for the BIOMASS Mission (proposed in 2005) and leads the scientific team. NCEO research in this area includes measurement, modelling, system analysis and developing sensor properties to improve carbon cycle models. 

Professor Mat Williams, University of Edinburgh and NCEO, is also a key member of the BIOMASS Mission Advisory Group bringing ecological, modelling and data assimilation expertise to the application of BIOMASS data. Dr Steve Hancock, Director at the NCEO’s Field Spectroscopy Facility, will work with data captured from the BIOMASS mission to produce 3D mapping.  

Instrument payload 

The ESA BIOMASS mission will carry, for the first time from space, a P-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instrument to determine the amount of biomass and carbon stored in forests. The instruments are capable of capturing data at a resolution of 200 m. 

Mission facts 

  • BIOMASS Mission website 
  • Provisional Launch Date: 2024 
  • Mission Advisory Group members; Professor Shaun Quegan, NCEO and University of Sheffield and Professor Mat Williams, NCEO and University of Edinburgh 
  • Funding Agency: ESA 

EarthCARE

Mission Summary 

The Earth Clouds, Aerosols, and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) satellite mission represents a collaborative effort between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Its objectives are to estimate global profiles of aerosols, clouds, and precipitation properties, and to relate these quantities to the amount of solar and thermal energy escaping the Earth’s atmosphere into space. 

By combining comprehensive observations of weather systems with estimates of outgoing energy, the mission aims to improve weather forecasting. The gathered data will provide valuable insights into how clouds and aerosols impact the energy cycle (link to the water/energy cycle page). On the other hand, it will shed light on the influence of increased energy retention in the Earth system, attributed to greenhouse gases, on cloud properties. 

Video caption: 
EarthCARE will employ high-performance lidar and radar technology that has never been flown in space before, with the objective to deliver unprecedented datasets to allow scientists to study the relationship of clouds, aerosols and radiation at accuracy levels that will significantly improve our understanding of these highly variable parameters. 

Instrument payload 

The satellite will fly at an altitude of 393 km in a sun-synchronous orbit, ensuring it crosses the Equator at a fixed solar time. The platform will carry four instruments:  

  • atmospheric lidar 
  • cloud profiling radar 
  • multi-spectral imager 
  • broadband radiometer 
     

The lidar is designed to measure aerosol and thin cloud profiles, while the radar penetrates deeper into clouds, reaching precipitation near the surface. Its high sensitivity facilitates overlapping with the lidar at cloud tops, ensuring complementary data. Additionally, the radar is first of its kind in space to additionally measure the velocity of detected particles. The imager provides horizontal information on clouds and aerosols, and the combined data from these three instruments enables a three-dimensional scene reconstruction. To verify the consistency of this reconstruction with the energy flow through the atmosphere, a broadband radiometer is employed. The geometry of the satellite measurements is depicted below.  

Mission facts 

Key Publication 

Wehr, T., Kubota, T., Tzeremes, G., Wallace, K., Nakatsuka, H., Ohno, Y., Koopman, R., Rusli, S., Kikuchi, M., Eisinger, M., Tanaka, T., Taga, M., Deghaye, P., Tomita, E., and Bernaerts, D.: The EarthCARE mission – science and system overview, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 3581–3608, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3581-2023, 2023. 

FORUM 

Mission Summary 

The Far-infrared Outgoing Radiation Understanding and Monitoring (FORUM) mission is ESA’s 9th Earth Explorer, designed to measure, for the first time, the Earth’s outgoing longwave radiation across the entire far-infrared with high spectral resolution and accuracy.  The mission goal is to use these measurements to constrain the processes that control far-infrared radiative transfer and hence enhance our understanding of the Earth’s Greenhouse Effect and critical climate feedbacks due to water vapour and cloud.  The observations will also be used to retrieve mid-upper tropospheric water vapour, ice cloud microphysics and, where possible, far-infrared surface emissivity.  

Video caption: ESA’s Earth Explorer FORUM mission will provide new insight into the planet’s radiation budget and how it is controlled. Earth’s surface temperature is driven by the radiation balance at the top of the atmosphere, but this balance has been disturbed by the emission of greenhouse gases that are trapping heat in the atmosphere that would otherwise escape into space.  

Instrument payload 

The FORUM payload consists of two instruments flying on the same polar orbiting satellite. The FORUM sounding instrument (FSI) will measure the outgoing energy spectrum, covering the range 6.25-100 microns.  Each observation will be integrated over a 15 km diameter footprint at the Earth’s surface.  The FORUM embedded imager (FEI) will measure in just one wavelength channel but at much higher spatial resolution to identify features contained within the FSI footprint and assist the interpretation of the FSI observations.  Flying FORUM in loose formation with the MetOp-SG satellite carrying IASI-NG, a mid-infrared instrument covering the spectral range 3.6-15.5 microns, will facilitate the first ever measurements of the complete outgoing longwave energy spectrum of the Earth.  

NCEO’s role in the mission 

NCEO scientists at Imperial College and Leicester University are helping to shape the mission, including developing bespoke ground-based and airborne instrumentation and performing spectroscopic studies which will aid with the interpretation of the measurements when they become available.  

Read the UK Space Agency blog to learn how FORUM will improve the accuracy of climate change forecasts.  

‘If our simulations are right, on the global average the region is responsible for over half of the Earth’s emission to space. Put another way, atmospheric absorption within the far-infrared makes a major contribution to the Earth’s Greenhouse effect.’ Professor Helen Brindley, Imperial College London and NCEO Director   
 

Mission facts 

  • Provisional Launch Date: 2027 
  • Orbit: Sun-synchronous polar 
  • Mission Duration: 5 years 
  • Mission Advisory Group members: Prof. Helen Brindley, NCEO, Imperial College London (Science Lead); Dr Jeremy Harrison, NCEO, University of Leicester 
  • Funding Agency: ESA 

Key Publication 

Palchetti L, H. Brindley, R. Bantges, S. Buehler, C. Camy-Peyret, B. Carli, U. Cortesi, S. Del Bianco, G. Di Natale, B. Dinelli, D. Feldman, X. Huang, L. Labonnote, Q. Libois, T. Maestri, M. Mlynczak, J. Murray, H. Oetjen, M. Ridolfi, M. Riese, J. Russell, R. Saunders and C. Serio, 2020. FORUM: unique far-infrared satellite observations to better understand how Earth radiates energy to space, Bull. 

GERB 

Mission Summary 

The Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) instruments, originally developed using funding from ESA and NERC, and now supported by EUMETSAT, are unique in providing dedicated measurements of the Earth’s Radiation Budget (ERB) from geostationary orbit.  

NCEO’s role in the mission 

There are different products generated from the GERB data, averaging the data over a range of spatial and temporal scales to provide flexibility and ease of use. These include the native resolution GERB Edition 1 top of atmosphere (TOA) RSW and OLR radiances and high resolution (HR) RSW and OLR fluxes presented on a fixed spatial grid at 15 minute resolution. NCEO researchers at Imperial College continue to develop new products to aid the community: most recently delivering tailored datasets specifically designed to facilitate easy comparison with Earth System Model output – the GERB obs4MIPs TOA RSW and OLR products. 

Instrument payload 

There are four GERB instruments, each one operating on the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) series of satellites. Each instrument provides spectrally integrated measurements of the Earth’s reflected shortwave radiation (RSW) and emitted longwave radiation (OLR) every 15 minutes, primarily over the region covering 60°N to 60°S and 60°E to 60°W.  The figure below shows example images constructed from GERB measurements for 12:00 UTC on 1st June 2008. The high temporal resolution data enable the evolution of RSW and OLR throughout the diurnal cycle to be examined, supporting scientific studies investigating controls on the observed behaviour (e.g. cloud, aerosol) and investigations into how well this behaviour is captured in numerical weather prediction and regional climate models.  GERB instruments have been operational since 2004 and are expected to continue to produce data until the late 2020s. 

MicroCarb

Mission Summary 

MicroCarb, a joint British–French satellite dedicated to monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. 

The Microcarb Mission aims to quantify sources and sinks of carbon dioxide (CO2) — the principal greenhouse gas — on a global scale. It will gauge how much carbon is being absorbed by oceans and forests, the main sinks on the planet, and emitted by natural processes and human activities. 

Currently, a lack of data makes it difficult to measure how much CO2 is absorbed by and released into the atmosphere, but such information is vital to gain deeper insights into natural carbon fluxes and inform climate models. 

Video caption: MicroCarb is the first European mission designed to map sources of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations on a global and city scale. It will be able to model where concentrations of CO2 are coming from and where they are going to i.e. where CO2 is emitted and where it is taken up by the world’s forests and oceans.  

“Data from MicroCarb will play a crucial role in extending our current ability to verify reductions in global and national emissions of CO2 in response to the demands of the Paris Agreement. 

Professor Paul Palmer, UK Lead MicroCarb Scientist and NCEO Science Director based at the University of Edinburgh

NCEO’s role in the mission 

NCEO scientists at the universities of Leicester and Edinburgh, will help develop the core data products and translate observations of atmospheric CO2 into maps that show carbon sources and sinks. 

Scientists from the NCEO at the University of Leicester have also worked on the mission’s Solar Induced Fluorescence (SIF) retrieval algorithm, a proxy for photosynthetic activity, which can provide key information on the carbon cycle, complementing that from CO2 observations. 
 

Instrument payload 

The primary instrument aboard MicroCarb is a dispersive spectrometer. The instrument utilizes the principle of spectrometry to measure the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.  

Mission facts 

  • Provisional Launch Date: 2025 
  • Mission duration: 5 years 
  • Orbit: sun-synchronous orbit, 650km above the Earth 
  • Mission Advisory Group members: Professor Paul Palmer, NCEO Science Director based at the University of Edinburgh is UK Lead MicroCarb Scientist. Dr Robert Parker, NCEO Research Fellow, is a MicroCarb Mission Advisory Group Member. 
  • Funding Agency: CNES (France), EU and additional funding from UK Space Agency 

TRUTHS

Mission Summary 

The TRUTHS Mission aims to enhance our ability to estimate the Earth’s radiation budget by an order of magnitude, through direct measurement of the Earth’s incoming and outgoing radiation and enhanced performance of other satellites.  

Many satellites collect data, measuring how our planet is changing, but as they orbit the Earth the calibration of their instruments gradually drifts, making the measurements they send back less accurate, despite on-board recalibration systems and the use of ground targets for re-calibration. 

The TRUTHS satellite will be a calibration laboratory in space, increasing the accuracy of calibration of orbiting satellites by up to 10 times, upgrading the performance of the whole Earth Observation (EO) system. It will benchmark global climate measurements with uncertainty levels that are small enough that future change can be detected in as short a time as possible. 

Video caption: TRUTHS will measure incoming and reflected solar radiation 10 times more accurately than is currently possible. This enables TRUTHS to increase confidence in data from other EO satellites through in-flight cross-calibration. 

TRUTHS will give the world a new reference sensor delivering a capability to inter-calibrate different imaging satellites in a way that has not been possible before. 

Professor John Remedios, NCEO Director.

 

Instrument payload 

TRUTHS stands for Traceable Radiometry Underpinning Terrestrial- and Helio- Studies. The satellite will carry a hyperspectral imager to take detailed measurements of incoming radiation from the Sun as well as radiation reflected from the Earth, improving our understanding of climate change and the changing temperature of the Earth. 

Mission facts 

  • TRUTHS Mission website  
  • Provisional Launch Date: 2030 
  • Mission duration: 5 years 
  • Funding Agency: Led by the UK Space Agency (UKSA) in partnership with several European states. Delivered by the European Space Agency (ESA)