August 10th 1992 marked the launch of the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite, the first major oceanographic focussed mission. Twenty five years, and three successor satellites, later the dataset begun by TOPEX/Poseidon is going strong providing sea surface height measurements. TOPEX/Poseidon was a … Continue reading
Blue holes are deep marine caverns or sinkholes which are open at the surface, and they get their name from their apparent blue colour of their surface due to the scattering of the light within water. The often contain both … Continue reading
June 8th is World Oceans Day. This is an annual global celebration of the oceans, their importance and how they can be protected for the future. The idea of a World Ocean Day was originally proposed by the Canadian Government … Continue reading
A couple of interesting articles came out in the last week relating to ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. It caught our attention, as we’re currently knee deep in SMOS data at the moment, due to the soil moisture … Continue reading
This week we’re focusing on the development of Dubai’s land-coast interface between July 2001 and October 2009, looking specifically at the creation of the Palm islands and the World Archipelago. Dubai is the most populous city in the United Arab … Continue reading
2017 is looking like an exciting one for Earth Observation (EO), judging by the number of significant satellites planned for launch this year. We thought it would be interesting to give an overview of some of the key EO launches … Continue reading
We’re all about small satellites with this blog, after looking at the big beast that is GOES-R last week. Small satellites, microsatellites, cubesats or one of the other myriad of names they’re described as, have been in the news this … Continue reading
On Saturday, 19th November, at 10.42pm GMT the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series (GOES-R) is due to be launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA. The GOES-R is a geostationary weather satellite operated by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration … Continue reading
There’s been a flurry of reports in the last couple of weeks, reporting melting ice and retreating glaciers in Greenland and the Himalayas respectively. A paper by McMillan et al (2016), titled ‘A high-resolution record of Greenland mass balance’ and … Continue reading
What is ocean acidification? Since the industrial revolution the oceans have absorbed approximately 50% of the CO2 produced by human activities (The Royal Society, 2005). Scientists previously saw this oceanic absorption as advantageous, however ocean observations in recent decades have … Continue reading
