ESA · Ruimte

Sentinel-3 Mission Crucial for Tracking Climate Change, Third Satellite Launch Imminent

The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, a diverse Earth observation system, has significantly advanced our understanding of climate change over the past decade. With its unique combination of sensors, it monitors oceans, land, and atmosphere, providing data crucial for scientific research, policy-making, and essential climate variables. The upcoming launch of its third satellite, Sentinel-3C, ensures the continuity of this vital data stream.

Since its first satellite launch a decade ago, Sentinel-3 has provided extensive data on oceans, land, and atmosphere, contributing to academic research, policy reports, and monitoring environmental changes. Its integrated sensors allow for rapid data capture across large regions, making it unique within the Copernicus family for its diverse monitoring capabilities.

Sentinel-3 data covers ocean and ice surface characteristics, land heat, land use changes like forest cover, and atmospheric greenhouse gases. This comprehensive overview informs reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and supports EU climate change policies. The addition of Sentinel-3C ensures mission continuity, aiding resilience and tracking key climate indicators.

The mission's data aligns with the 55 Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Sentinel-3's broad geophysical data collection forms the basis for much of climate science.

Sentinel-3 satellites offer daily global coverage and can observe methane concentrations with high resolution, complementing other Copernicus missions. In 2023, it helped identify methane leaks of at least 10 tonnes per hour, positioning it to monitor such emissions. The mission also supports datasets for carbon emissions, pollution, and dust particles, with its wide-angle sensors effective for regional monitoring of industrial emissions, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, and dust storms.

The mission consistently measures land surface temperatures, highlighting heatwaves and wildfires. It also provides data on global forests, including vegetation indexes, forest cover mapping, drought monitoring, and burn scar mapping.

Sentinel-3, alongside other Sentinel missions, has revolutionized understanding of the water cycle through global observations of sea, river, and lake levels, sea surface temperatures, ocean color, and ice thickness. It produces exceptional altimetry data on water systems and optical data on sea ice extent, showing complementarity between optical and altimetry measurements.

Its accurate thermal sensor reliably measures sea surface temperature, critical for understanding ocean changes and supporting research on biodiversity and acidification. The Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimeter (SRAL) provides data on sea-level rise, contributing to long-term datasets and establishing the accelerating rate of global sea-level rise at an average of 3.64 mm per year since 1999.

Sentinel-3 contributes valuable altimetry data to sea-ice thickness datasets, aiding scientists in understanding and predicting record low ice extents. Data on Arctic sea ice has been analyzed in conjunction with data from ESA's CryoSat and SMOS missions.

The mission provides data for Copernicus, the EU's Earth observation program, offering rapid mapping for emergency activations, particularly for wildfires and flooding. Sentinel-3 excels at monitoring extreme events, with its wide-swath thermal and optical observations enabling global, daily detection of wildfires and other events. It also measures sea-surface height, temperature, and wind/wave dynamics for tracking marine storm surges and typhoons.

While Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B were launched in 2016 and 2018, data processing and usage are continuously evolving. ESA teams are improving data capture, transmission, and user accessibility, enabling new ways to analyze data beyond the mission's original scope, such as sea-ice thickness and land hydrology.

Sentinel-3C is scheduled to launch on September 15th, joining Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B. Operated jointly by Eumetsat and ESA, the mission's third satellite builds upon its predecessors' success, ensuring continuity and providing essential knowledge about climate and its effects. The launch vehicle, Europe's Vega-C rocket, is capable of deploying small scientific and Earth observation spacecraft, with Sentinel-3C deploying first.

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