ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Future Perspectives for Satellite Observations

Craig DonlonESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands

Francios MontagnierEUMETSAT, Darmstadt, Germany

Copernicus for Coastal zone monitoring and management, Brussels, 29th June 2017

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 2ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Overview

• Coastal EO measurements and challenges - by

example to make you think about possibilities…

• Some key and urgent coastal societal challenges

that we face

• Where are we today (2021) and what EO capability

do we need for coastal work?

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 3ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 4ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Changing Meteo

Copernicus

Science

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 5ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Satellite instruments generally measure 2D surface expressions of 4D structures

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 6ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Some major coastal societal challenges we face

• Living and working in coastal regions

• Ecosystem and biodiversity

preservation

• Sea level rise and coastal inundation

• Marine plastics and pollution

• Information overload

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 7ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

(Image credit: http://www.nral.org)

Coastal processes…

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 8ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Coastal Monitoring: Challenges for Space• Coastal studies are inherently interdisciplinary across aquatic and

terrestrial disciplines • Eg. Wetlands, shoreline processes, the water surface, the water column, bathymetry

and benthic cover types, societal use of the coastal zone

• Regular observations of physical and biogeochemical components in inland and coastal waters support EU directives

• Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), the Water Framework Directive (WFD), Bathing Water Directive (BWD), Natura 2000, the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSPD) and Integrated Coastal Management (ICM), the Habitats Directive on habitat mapping and monitoring and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands…

The Coastal environment is a challenge:• Extreme marine bio-optical complexity exists: from clear to dark waters, from turbid

sediment to highly eutrophic waters.

• Extreme atmospheric and surface (land-to-coast) gradients exist challenges for atmospheric corrections, adjacency effects

• Extreme costal dynamics exist (especially in tidal regions): exacerbated by bathymetry (shallowing waters), complex coastline, varied winds complex ageostrophic sub-mesoscale marine structures

• Extreme societal pressures exist: migration to the coastline and development of coastal megacities places extreme pressure on the coastal environment (transportation, aquaculture, shipping, fisheries, pollution, marine debris/plastics, tourism…)

• Extreme societal risk exists: Sea Level Rise, Storm surge, coastal flooding, HAB, pollution events, water quality…

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 9ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Coastal form: challenges for EO and modelingCornwall, UK: wind gusts from land to sea from S2A sunglitter

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 10ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Lisbon from Sentinel-2A MSI 05/05/2017 & 27/09/16

Band B8 (842nm)Stretched for glitter

Costa da Caparica on 27/09/2016

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 11ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

(Quinten Vanhellemont & Kevin Ruddick)

S2A resolution in E. Channel 28/08/15

Image: Dimitry van der Zande

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 12ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

S2 glitter: Ship tank flushing oil, 1/04/2016 SE Spanish coast

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 13ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

S2: Internal waves at the head of the Adour River Plume, close to Biarritz

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 14ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Sentinel-2 marine innovation

Potential HAB, False BayCapetown, South Africa

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 15ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Rapid & complex marine processes

(Slide: Tim Moore)

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 16ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Coastal Sensor Characteristics

• Spatial Resolution: coastal processes are complex and very dynamic (esp. in tidal regions). Many marine features are ageostropic and sub-mesoscale requiring very high spatial resolution (~10m)

• Signal to noise: optimized for the optically complex aquatic environment (eg >800)

• Spectral capability: Depends on what you want… eg.

• For marine biogeochemistry optical hyper-spectral data are required (but clouds are an issue)

• Multi-channel Thermal high resolution ~50m for a variety of applications

• For all weather SST we need C-band passive microwave instruments at high resolution (Priority for CMEMS)

• SAR for maritime safety/marine pollution/sea ice/shipping

• Altimeters for sea level monitoring…

• Temporal resolution: In a tidal area we need hourly measurements to make sense of the rapidly changing environment

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 17ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Tidal flows: can be significant

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 18ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Geostationary capability

Slide: D. Antione

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 19ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Sentinel-1 VV-roughness SAR: image over Brest and the Iroise, France (2014-09-01)

Microbreaking and surface waves –the gearbox of the air-sea interaction “engine”

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 20ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Global data interpolated to a 25 km grid from 1993 to 2016 (May) include:- Daily Surface

geostrophic current - 3-hourly Surface

Ekman current - 3-hourly Ekman

current at 15 m depth- Total current at surface

(download from www.globcurrent.org)

http://globcurrent.oceandatalab.com/

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 21ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Coral Reef: BathymetryLizard Island, Great Barrier Reef

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 22ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Arctic Permafrost and carbon inputs

Credit: Graph: Alfred-Wegener-Institut/Michael Fritz/Yves Nowak

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 23ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Cape Bonavista (Newfoundland)

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 24ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

1-day icedrift from 7/9/2016 -> 8/9/2016 Sentinel-1A+B to Sentinel-1B (red)Courtesy CMEMS

CMEMS: ”Same high quality for ice drift from S1B as from S1A”

”Small deviations are due to differences in acquisition times of S1A and S1B”

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 25ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Sea level change: impacts

OosterscheldekeringStorm Surge Barrier

Maeslant Storm Surge Barrier

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 26ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Multi-Mission altimetry sea level time series (also covering polar seas…)

54 54.5 55 55.5 56 56.5 57 57.5 58 58.50

0.5

1

1.5

2Relative Total Water Level along Cryosat−2 overpass 23:05 GMT 6/12/2013

latitude

level (m)

Sw

ed

en

Germ

an

y

Kattegat

Great Belt

La

ng

ela

nd

(D

en

ma

rk)

Friday 6 Dec 23:05

Data were available on eSurge Server by Saturday lunchtime

Xaver (Bodil), December 2013

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 28ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Marine litter

• A major and growing threat to

marine ecosystems and the

health of ourselves

• The root cause is a societal

issue…

• The solution is not obvious

• How can we model/measure

surface transports?

• Monitoring from space is a

significant challenge…

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 29ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Unique absorption peaks related to floating plastics (slide: H. Dierssen)

Garaba and Dierssen submitted RSE

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 30ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

ESA’s EARTH EXPLORER 8 –“Hyperspectal” FLEX Mission

Tandem Mission Concept with Sentinel-3:

➢ 5-30 sec temporal collocation with OLCI➢ 300 × 300 m2 spatial resolution➢ 150 km swath width

➢ 500 – 780 nm spectral coverage➢ 0.3 – 2 nm spectral sampling intervals

FLEX Poster available in Sessions 1 and 2!

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 31ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Coastal TEP – basic idea & architecture

Collaborative tools

Analysis toolboxes

Modelling/visualisation

MotherTEP

ChildTEP

Black Sea

ChildTEP

Mediterranean

ChildTEP

Atlantic ChildTEP

Baltic

data

models

processing

data

models

processing

data

models

processing

data models processing

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 32ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

What does the Coastal TEP enable?

Unified access to/

processing of

heterogeneous

coastal data

Routine

Monitoring

& Analysis/

Reference

Datasets

Development of

Customized

Applications

& Services

Support to

Cooperative

Research

Support to

Integrated

Management

Plans

Support to

National

Reporting

Support to

Regional

Strategies/

Action plans

Communication,

Education and

Citizen Engagement

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 33ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Conclusions• Copernicus is well equipped to make basic but sustained

operational measurements in the Coastal region:

• S2/S3 global coastal areas mapped; Polar and reference orbit altimetry; Operational SAR; Thermal IR at 1km (insufficient); some “hyperspectral” optical capability.

• Notable areas for development include:

• How can we measure sub-mesoscale ocean currents from space in the coastal zone? (not the sea but what is in it that matters)

• High resolution thermal infrared (~50m) – use with S2 Visible SWIR

• “High Resolution” (~10km) passive microwave radiometry (all weather capability) – esp. for Arctic where clouds are a major problem

• Hyperspectral optical spectrometers (OLCI can do some of this, FLEX also but they are not sufficient)

• Geostationary capability (temporal resolution)

C. Donlon | 15/06/2017 | Slide 34ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

Conclusions – to improve Coastal

• Better synergy between EO data using cloud computing type infrastructure (snapshot not gridded data)

• Better integration of models and satellite measurements (CMEMS evolution)

• Development of tailored - but fundamental - products at regional level - including validation using fiducial Reference Measurements

• Multiple satellite instruments together with specific coastal models and in situ data (including non-traditional unstructured data) is the way forward: no single sensor will suffice

• The immediate Copernicus space segment future is good – but not perfect

• Expanded engagement and action by non-Copernicus actors is critical

• But – the coastal environment is complex: EO, CMEMS, CLMS and others need to tailor to specific applications where possible

• More R&D to seed coastal EO applications is needed to stabilize products