Extreme Temperature

The Mongolian National Agency for Meteorology and Environmental Monitoring (NAMEM) has developed a extreme winter (dzud) risk map for the country using MODIS satellite data, among other resources. The map shows that over 50 per cent of the country are at risk of a severe winter. Following the analysis, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has released funds to limit the impact on vulnerable herders. The early action move is carried out under the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) forecast-based financing (FbF) approach, an early action protocol under which funds are released ahead of a disaster to limit its impact. 

NAMEM developed the dzud risk map using 11 different parameters based on remote sensing data collected from MODIS satellite, such as snow cover and…

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The Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) Map is a website for map-based access to spatial information. It’s is still being developed by Data61 CSIRO in collaboration with Geoscience Australia. DE Africa is leveraging international Earth Observation (EO) data and science to produce new information and services that benefit African countries. Through translating data into ready-to-use insights, more informed decisions about soil and coastal erosion, agriculture, deforestation, desertification, water quality and changes to human settlements can be made. The data is organized in data-cubes and will be fully available by 2020.

The training date is in the past. However, videos and resources of the training can be accessed here.

This webinar will focus on a NASA instrument that was launched and installed on the International Space Station in summer 2018. Designed to study terrestrial ecosystems and plant water stress from the ISS, ECOSTRESS can also be used to better understand crop health, volcanoes, urban heat, wildland fires, coastal systems, and much more. 

The primary science and applications mission of ECOSTRESS is to address three critical questions around vegetation health and agriculture:

1. How is the terrestrial biosphere responding to changes in water availability?
2. How do…

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Major disasters such as droughts and wildfires are driven by the dryness of vegetation. To enhance the monitoring of plant water stress, NASA launched and installed a new sensor on the International Space Station. ECOSTRESS (ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station) allows identifying loss of water in leaves- even before they show visible signs of trouble.

The image to the left shows a product derived from ECOSTRESS data, indicating that the forest fires during the 2019 Amazon dry season were concentrated in water-stressed areas, which are not visible on optical imagery. “To the naked eye, the fires appear randomly distributed throughout the forest,…

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In the past year, “there were 315 natural disaster events recorded with 11,804 deaths, over 68 million people affected, and US$131.7 billion in economic losses around the world.” This is according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in its recently released 2018 Natural Disasters Report. 

While these 2018 natural disaster values represent a decrease when compared with the annual averages from 2008 to 2017, some geographic areas still experienced great losses of life and damages due to natural hazards. Indonesia was most adversely impacted in terms of lives claimed, with earthquakes in August and September 2018 that left a total of 4,904 people dead or missing, according to the CRED. Earthquakes also accounted for the greatest number of deaths among natural disasters worldwide in 2018. And among all types of natural hazards, floods affected the greatest number of people during the…

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To meet the global challenges, the United Nations adopted several framework agreements, including the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction at the Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030). The framework builds the international reference point for disaster preparedness and focuses on reducing existing and future disaster risks as well as enhancing disaster resilience. In the Sendai framework, seven global targets have been agreed to measure global progress in implementing the framework through quantifiable indicators and to present, compare and evaluate the status and progress uniformly worldwide. The recording of the status and degree of target achievement using the agreed indicators requires the use of various data sources, which must be consistent and comparable in time and space in order to ensure global monitoring.

ESA's Earth Observation Thematic Exploitation Platform (TEP) is a browser for satellite imagery and specific products on an environmental topic. The TEP platforms are divided into 7 categories: Coastal; Forstry; Geohazards; Hydrology; Polar; Urban; and Food Security. Each platform is a collaborative, virtual work environment providing access to EO data and the tools, processors and Information and Communication Technology resources required to work with them. TEP aims to bridge the gap between the users and the data and tools.