The shore-based Advanced Training on Ocean Synergy Remote Sensing course is designed to help students work with increasingly varying but complementary satellite data sets to study the ocean. The OTC25 shore-based course consists of 19 two hour modules that are run online via Webex connections once per week, for a duration of 2 hours each.
Each module will explain a different Earth Observation satellite measurement: how they work, how different instruments measure different parameters, and how we can apply derived data in different ways for ocean science applications. The shore-based course will focus on a Virtual Voyage of the expected ship route in 2025.
Timetable
Software and Tools
Lecturers
Duration |
| 16:30-16:50 | 16:50-17:10 | 17:30-17:50 | 17:50-18:15 | Webex link | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
12th Nov 2024 | General Introduction Groups | 5.1 Welcome and Introduction to the Training Course and what we expect from you Peter Thompson (UN Special Envoy for the Ocean, Dr Craig Donlon (ESA) and Dr Fabrice Collard (ODL) | 5.2 Student projects and group work – working together | 5.3 Round Table Introduction from Lecturer Team: Who are you & what do you want to get out of the course? (Please send 1 PPT slide on what you want to achieve during the OTC25 and prepare a 1-minute pitch to present to the group. We will share the slide with everyone, and you should present yourself orally) | |||||
18th Nov 2024 | Preparing Computer Tools | 5.4 OTC25 Student installation of computer tools and tutorial “clinic” to troubleshoot Lucile Gaultier (ODL) and OTC25 Team | 5.4 OTC25 Student installation of computer tools and tutorial “clinic” to troubleshoot Lucile Gaultier (ODL) and OTC25 Team | ||||||
19th Nov 2024 | Oceanography of the Voyage | 5.5 The One Ocean Expedition and ESA OTC25 Haakon Vattle (Statsraad Lehmkuhl Foundation) | 5.6 Norwegian Sea from Space and below | 5.7 Northeast Atlantic Ocean from space and below
| 5.8 Mediterranean Sea from Space and below | ||||
26th Nov 2024 | SEAScope and OVL Portal | 5.9 Introduction to OVL Portal | 5.10 Introduction to SEAScope Visualisation and Analyses tool | ||||||
3rd Dec 2024
| Mesoscale and sub-mesoscale Structures | 5.11 Thermal Imaging of the Ocean from Space
| 5.12 Thermal Imaging of the Ocean from Space (interactive session) | 5.12 Selecting, exploring and validating sea surface temperature products
| 5.12 Selecting, exploring and validating sea surface temperature products (interactive session) | ||||
10th Dec 2024
| Measuring SST and Salinity from Microwave Radiometers | 5.13 Microwave Radiometry of the Ocean from Space | 5.14 SST/SSS and extreme wind observations from Microwave Radiometers |
5.14 SST/SSS/wind observations from Satellite Microwave Radiometers during the OCT25 Voyage
| Link to the recording | ||||
17th Dec 2024 | Mesoscale and sub-mesoscale Structures | 5.15 Ocean Colour Radiometry (OCR) of the ocean from space Dr. Astrid Bracher (AWI) and Dr Hayley Evers-King (EUMETSAT) | 5.16 Deriving geophysical information from the ocean colour signal Dr Hayley Evers-King (EUMETSAT) and Dr. Astrid Bracher (AWI) | 5.17 Regional Ocean colour applications
Dr Hayley Evers-King (EUMETSAT) and Dr. Astrid Bracher (AWI) | 5.18 In situ approaches to complement Satellite ocean colour in Marine Microbial Research Dr Kat Morissey (Uni Cape Town) | Link to the recording | |||
7th Jan 2025 | Looking into the ocean using Ocean Models | 5.19 Ocean Forecasting: models, data, access and applications Dr Elodie Gutknecht & Dr Sylvain Cailleau (Mercator Ocean) | 5.19 Ocean Forecasting: models, data, access and applications Dr Elodie Gutknecht & Dr Sylvain Cailleau (Mercator Ocean) | ||||||
14th Jan 2025 | Making Measurements at sea | 5.20 Making OTC25 measurements at sea OTC25 Team | 5.20 Making OTC25 measurements at sea OTC25 Team | ||||||
21st Jan 2025 | Making Measurements at sea | 5.21 Ocean Instruments aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl Geir Pedersen (Institute of Marine Research, Norway) | 5.21 Ocean Instruments aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl Geir Pedersen (Institute of Marine Research, Norway) | ||||||
27th Jan 2025 | Optical properties | 5.22 Relationship between ocean matter and its optical principles Dr. Emmanuel Boss (University of Maine, USA) | 5.23 How we measure the optical properties of the material in the ocean Dr. Emmanuel Boss (University of Maine, USA) | ||||||
28th Jan 2025 | Marine Acoustics and Gravimetry | 5.24 Remote Sensing in the Ocean: Basic Principles and Applications of Underwater Acoustic measurements Roger Haagmans | 5.25 Gravity and the Ocean | ||||||
4th Feb 2025 | Satellite Altimetry | 5.26 Satellite Altimetry of the Oceans from space Dr. Alejandro Egido (ESA) | 5.27 Estimates of Ocean Circulation from Satellite Altimetry Dr. Marie Helene Rio (ESA) | 5.28 Jupyter notebook on geostrophic surface current estimation from altimeter sea surface height Dr. Lucile Gaultier (ODL) | |||||
11th Feb 2025 | Ocean Circulation from Synergy (altimeters) | 5.29 Regional sea-level variability and budget: a focus on the Nordic high latitudes
| 5.30 Advanced techniques for mapping sea surface height (SSH) from space Florian Le Guillou (DATLAS, France) | 5.31 Satellite Altimetry in synergy with other measurements Dr. Marie Helene Rio (ESA) | 5.32 Upper dynamic synergies synoptic chart analysis and velocity products intercomparison Dr. Lucile Gaultier (ODL) | ||||
18th Feb 2025 | Wind wave current measurements from Space (Synthetic Aperture Radar) | 5.33 Estimating Sea State from Space using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) | 5.24 Directional Wave Spectrum from space
| 5.35 Direct observations of the Ocean Total Surface Currents from Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar Dr. Artem Moiseev (NERSC) | 5.36 Jupyter notebook on Surface current estimation from Sentinel1 Doppler shift in the Med Sea Dr. Fabrice Collard (ODL) | ||||
25th Feb 2025 | Wind wave current measurements from Space | 5.37 Radar Scatterometry over the ocean Dr Ad Stoffelen, (KNMI) | 5.38 Vector winds derived from Radar Scatterometry over the ocean Dr Ad Stoffelen, (KNMI) | 5.39 Ocean Signatures from Optical Sun Glitter | 5.40 Ocean surface roughness satellite Measurements in Synergy | ||||
4th Mar 2025 | Student Plans for activities abord the ship | 5.41 Presentation from each Student or Student group on research plans | 5.41 Presentation from each Student or Student group on research plans | ||||||
11th Mar 2025 | Air-sea interaction | 5.42 Physical mechanisms for air-sea gas exchange Prof. Anna Rutgersson | 5.43 Calculating global atmosphere-ocean CO2 gas fluxes using satellite, in situ and synergy) Prof. Jamie Shutler, University of Exeter | ||||||
18th Mar 2025 | Ocean and Carbon | 5.44 Exploring the biological carbon cycle: where biology meets chemistry to connect atmosphere to seafloor Dr. Saskia Rühl PML | 5.45 The amazing carbon cycle and the complete ocean carbon cycle: The ocean carbon sink, acidification and conservation Prof. Jamie Shutler, University of Exeter | ||||||
25th Mar 2025 | Sea Ice measurements from space | 5.46 Tracking sea ice from space A. Shepard (University of Northumbria) | 5.47 Safe navigation in sea ice infested waters A. Korosev (NERSC) | ||||||
1st Apr 2025 | Extremes and Climate Change | 5.48 ESA Satellite Oceanography: from exploration to operational oceanography and climate monitoring Dr Mark Drinkwater (ESA) | 5.49 Observing Extreme Storm Events from Space | ||||||
8th Apr 2025 | Fiducial Reference Measurements (**Extended session to 19:00**) | 5.50 Fiducial Reference Measurements (FRM): What are they and why are they important? Dr Emma Wooliams (NPL, London) | 5.51 FRM and Sea Surface Temperature
Dr Craig Donlon (ESA) | 5.52 FRM for sea surface salinity Dr Roberto Sabia (ESA) | 5.53 FRM for System Vicarious calibration and validation in ocean colour Dr Ewa Kwiatowska (EUMETSAT) | 5.54 FRM and Ocean Colour for System Vicarious Calibration of OCR Dr Hayley Evers-King and Dr Ewa Kwiatowska (EUMETSAT) | |||
15th Apr 2025 | Preparing for the At-sea course *** 14:00 – 18:00 *** | 14:00 (5.55) Life aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl
Haakon Vatle, CEO Statsraad Lehmkuhl Foundation | 14:30 (5.56) Practical information for Joining the ship Craig Donlon (ESA) and Haakon Vatle, CEO Statsraad Lehmkuhl Foundation | 15:00 (5.57) Tall ships and spaceships: an astronaut’s perspective of the ocean Pablo Alvarez Fernandez (ESA) | 16:00-18:00 (5.58) Extended session: Personal Scientific Research Plans and Groupwork | ||||
Software and Tools
The Ocean Virtual Laboratory Portal, developed by ODL and funded by ESA, aims to promote the synergistic use of Ocean Remote Sensing data in a wider
context of Oceanic and Atmospheric models or in-situ data. It has a server side connected to data archives and two client sides, a web client (OVL Portal Web) and a standalone client (SEAScope SA).
You can access the OVL Web portal and other Syntool based portals using the following links:
SEAScope stand alone application is available for download here:
ESA SENTINEL APPLICATION PLATFORM (SNAP)
http://step.esa.int/main/toolboxes/snap/
SNAP is a common architecture for all Sentinel Toolboxes is being jointly developed by Brockmann Consult, Array Systems Computing and C-S called the Sentinel Application Platform(SNAP). The SNAP architecture is ideal for Earth Observation processing and analysis due the following technological innovations: Extensibility, Portability, Modular Rich Client Platform, Generic EO Data Abstraction, Tiled Memory Management, and a Graph Processing Framework.
SNAP includes the following features:
- Common architecture for all Toolboxes
- Very fast image display and navigation even of giga-pixel images
- Graph Processing Framework (GPF): for creating user-defined processing chains
- Advanced layer management allows adding and manipulation of new overlays such as images of other bands, images from WMS servers or ESRI shapefiles
- Rich region-of-interest definitions for statistics and various plots
- Easy bitmask definition and overlay
- Flexible band arithmetic using arbitrary mathematical expressions
- Accurate reprojection and ortho-rectification to common map projections,
- Geo-coding and rectification using ground control points
- Automatic SRTM DEM download and tile selection
- Product library for scanning and cataloguing large archives efficiently
- Multithreading and Multi-core processor support
- Integrated WorldWind visualisation
ESA Polar Thematic Exploitation Platform (TEP)
Polar TEP – Earth Observation Data Platform for the Polar Regions (polarview.org) The Polar Thematic Exploitation Platform provides a complete working environment where users can access algorithms and data remotely, providing computing resources and tools that they might not otherwise have, avoiding the need to download and manage large volumes of data. This new approach removes the need to transfer large Earth Observation data sets around the world, while increasing the analytical power available to researchers and operational service providers. Earth Observation is especially import in the polar regions at a time when climate change is having a profound impact and excitement about new economic opportunities is driving increased attention and traffic, resulting in concerns about the state of the region’s delicate ecosystems. Developing tools to model, understand and monitor these changes is vitally important in order to better predict and mitigate the resulting global economic and environmental consequences. Polar TEP provides new ways to exploit EO data for research scientists, industry, operational service providers, regional authorities and in support of policy development.
JUPYTER NOTEBOOK
The IPython Notebook is now known as the Jupyter Notebook. It is an interactive computational environment, in which you can combine code execution, rich text, mathematics, plots and rich media. For more details on the Jupyter Notebook, please see the website at https://jupyter.org/
ESA FLUXENGINE ATMOSPHERE-OCEAN GAS FLUX CALCULATOR
The FluxEngine is an open-source software toolbox for calculating atmosphere-ocean gas fluxes. The toolbox allows users to easily generate global and regional air-sea gas flux data from any combination of model, in situ and Earth Observation data. All inputs and calculations are user configurable. The toolbox can be installed using pip (pypi) and the source code and handbook is available on github.
https://pypi.org/project/fluxengine/
https://github.com/oceanflux-ghg/FluxEngine
Please cite the publication below when using the FluxEngine or any of its outputs:
Shutler JD, Land PE, Piolle J-F, Woolf DK, Goddijn-Murphy L, Paul F, Girard-Ardhuin F, Chapron B, Donlon CJ (2016), FluxEngine: a flexible processing system for calculating atmosphere-ocean carbon dioxide gas fluxes and climatologies, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, doi: 10.1175/JTECH-D-14-00204.1.
Lecturers
The team of lecturers has been composed of Principal Investigators and Scientists from leading universities and research institutions.
Dr Alejandro Egido, European Space Agency
Pablo Fenandez, European Space Agency
Dr. Antonio Bonaduce, Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center,
Maryke Bezuidenhout, Manguzi Hospital, S. Africa
Dr Emmanuel Boss, School of Marine Sciences
Prof Dr Astrid Bracher, AWI
Prof. Stephen Briggs, University of Reading,
Dr. Estel Cardellach, Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC, IEEC)
Dr. Bertrand Chapron, IFREMER
Dr. Fabrice Collard, OceanDataLab
Dr Gary Corlett, EUMETSAT
Dr Ben Loveday, EUMETSAT
Dr Craig Donlon, European Space Agency
Dr Mark R. Drinkwater, European Space Agency
Dr Florian Le Guillou, Datalas
Dr Hayley Evers-King, EUMETSAT
Dr Lucille Gualtier, OceanDataLab
Roger Haagmans, European Space Agency
Prof Johnny Johannessen, Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center,
Dr Anton Korosov, Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center,
Dr Ewa Kwiatowska, EUMETSAT,
Dr Artem Moiseev, Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing centre (NERSC)
Dr. Kat Morrisey, South African Environmental Observation network (SAEON)
Sejal Pramlall, University of Bergen
Dr Nicolas Reul, IFREMER
Dr Marie-Hélène Rio, ESA-ESRIN,
Dr Saskia Rühl, Plymouth Marine Laboratory,
Prof. Anna Rutgersson, University of Uppsala
Dr Roberto Sabia, ESA-ESRIN,
Prof. Andrew Sheperd, University of Northumbria,
Prof. Jamie Shutler, University of Exeter,
Haakon Vatle, CEO Statsraad Lehmkuhl Foundation
Dr Karina von Schuckmann, Mercator Ocean International
Dr Emma Wooliams, National Physics Laboratory
Dr Ziad El Khoury Hanna, OceanDataLab