{"id":13635,"date":"2025-02-25T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=13635"},"modified":"2025-02-20T03:09:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T03:09:17","slug":"satellite-climate-change-monitoring-revolution-february-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/satellite-climate-change-monitoring-revolution-february-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"How satellites revolutionised climate change science"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n \n aappp \/ shutterstock<\/span><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n Will de Freitas<\/a>, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

Until relatively recently, humans were limited by the horizon. Climate scientists of the early 20th century could gather data from the world around them and perhaps what they were able to see from a hot air balloon or plane. But the really big picture \u2013 the global snapshot \u2013 remained out of sight. <\/p>\n\n

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This roundup of The Conversation\u2019s climate coverage comes from our award-winning<\/a> weekly climate action newsletter<\/a>.<\/strong> Every Wednesday, The Conversation\u2019s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who\u2019ve subscribed.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n

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The first satellite of any kind was the USSR\u2019s Sputnik 1, launched in 1957. But it wasn\u2019t until the 1960s that satellites designed specifically to observe the Earth and its climate made it into orbit and gave us the first overview of weather patterns. By the 1970s Nasa\u2019s Landsat satellites were able to monitor things like tree cover.<\/p>\n\n

Jonathan Bamber, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol, says this \u201crevolutionised our ability to carry out a comprehensive and timely health check on the planetary systems we rely on for our survival\u201d. Data that once required months or even years of fieldwork was suddenly available in the time it took a satellite to orbit the planet. <\/p>\n\n

These days, this data can be remarkably precise and detailed. Bamber says: \u201cWe can measure changes in sea level down to a single millimetre, changes in how much water is stored in underground rocks, the temperature of the land and ocean and the spread of atmospheric pollutants and greenhouse gases, all from space.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Here\u2019s a map of sea level rise, from Bamber\u2019s article highlighting five satellite images that show how fast our planet is changing<\/a>: <\/p>\n\n

\n \"Map<\/a>\n
\n The sea is rising quickly \u2013\u00a0but not evenly.<\/span>\n ESA\/CLS\/LEGOS<\/span>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

\u201cThis image,\u201d writes Bamber, \u201cshows mean sea level trends over 13 years in which the global average rise was about 3.2mm a year. But the rate was three or four times faster in some places, like the south western Pacific to the east of Indonesia and New Zealand, where there are numerous small islands and atolls that are already very vulnerable to sea level rise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, scientists have used AI to sift through and analyse satellite data. Bamber\u2019s latest research, published in January this year, illustrates this nicely. <\/p>\n\n

A team of scientists, lead by Tian Li also of the University of Bristol, gathered millions of satellite images of glaciers in Svalbard, a remote and icy archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. In their write up<\/a>, they note that human researchers once painstakingly looked through this sort of data. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThis process\u201d, they write, \u201cis highly labour-intensive, inefficient and particularly unreproducible as different people can spot different things even in the same satellite image. Given the number of satellite images available nowadays, we may not have the human resources to map every region for every year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Their solution was to use AI to \u201cquickly identify glacier patterns across large areas\u201d. The satellite-AI combo meant they could examine Svalbard\u2019s retreating glaciers \u2013 surely among the least accessible places on the planet \u2013 in \u201cunprecedented scale and scope\u201d.<\/p>\n\n

They found that 91% of the many glaciers that flow into the sea around the archipelago have been \u201cshrinking significantly\u201d. They note that the same types of glacier can be found across the Arctic, and \u201cwhat happens to glaciers in Svalbard is likely to be repeated elsewhere\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of those glaciers can be found in Greenland, home of the northern hemisphere\u2019s largest ice sheet. In research published earlier this month, Tom Chudley of Durham University used satellite images to assess crevasses (cracks in the glaciers) in Greenland.<\/p>\n\n

\n \"satellite<\/a>\n
\n A large glacier in west Greenland flows into the sea. That iceberg filled fjord is several miles wide.<\/span>\n Copernicus Sentinel \/ lavizzara \/ shutterstock<\/span><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

Chudley also combined satellite images with computerised analysis. His work made use of \u201cArcticDEM\u201d, three dimensional maps of the polar regions based on high resolution satellite images. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cBy applying image-processing techniques to over 8,000 maps, we could estimate how much water, snow or air would be needed to “fill\u201d each crevasse across the ice sheet. This enabled us to calculate their depth and volume, and examine how they evolved.\u201c<\/p>\n\n

His conclusion was very blunt: the Greenland ice sheet is falling apart<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Health watchdogs<\/h2>\n\n

Many of you will be well aware that satellites are being used to monitor the health of the planet. What\u2019s less well known is the role they can play in monitoring human health. <\/p>\n\n

Dhritiraj Sengupta, a satellite scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, says satellites have become Earth\u2019s new health and nature watchdog<\/a>. His article details how satellites can map mosquito breeding sites to combat malaria, for instance, or can identify air pollution hotspots in cities. <\/p>\n\n

In his own research, he\u2019s used satellite-derived chlorophyll data to assess the risk of cholera. Chlorophyll is the green pigment in plants that helps them use sunlight to make their food and grow.<\/p>\n\n

“Many bacteria like Vibrio cholerae<\/em> which causes cholera, thrive in stagnant water,\u201d Sengupta writes. \u201cMy team worked with the European Space Agency to show that its presence can be modelled using the concentration of chlorophyll found on the surface of bodies of water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, so good. Satellites have undeniably been useful for climate scientists. But in the longer-term, the satellites themselves may have an unforeseen effect on the climate. <\/p>\n\n

Last year, SpaceX announced it would \u201cdeorbit\u201d 100 of its Starlink satellites to burn up in the atmosphere. Fionagh Thomson is a space expert, also at Durham University. She says that \u201catmospheric scientists are increasingly concerned that this sort of apparent fly-tipping by the space sector will cause further climate change down on Earth<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Particles from the satellites themselves won\u2019t have a huge effect compared to the \u201c440 tonnes of meteoroids that enter the atmosphere daily, along with volcanic ash and human-made pollution from industrial processes on Earth.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

But one team \u201crecently, and unexpectedly, found potential ozone-depleting metals from spacecraft in the stratosphere, the atmospheric layer where the ozone layer is formed.\u201d The worry is that satellite debris may help form certain types of clouds that lead to ozone loss and may add to the greenhouse effect.<\/p>\n\n

She notes that this is all uncertain and needs more research. \u201cBut,\u201d she writes, \u201cwe\u2019ve also learnt that if we wait until indisputable evidence is available, it may be too late, as with the loss of ozone. It\u2019s a constant dilemma.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Something for SpaceX scientists to look into, perhaps, once they\u2019ve finished rescuing stranded astronauts from the International Space Station. \"The<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will de Freitas<\/a>, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n

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