Most of our planet is covered by oceans, which are directly linked to our weather and climate, and so play a key role in our well-being and economy. Still our knowledge about Earth’s waters, especially about deep sea, is limited.
With the current available data, it is still very hard to assess the actual impact of oceans on climate change, which will directly affect 2 billion people in the world.
Many of the parameters to describe the Earth’s physics can only be observed by satellites. With its Sentinels satellites, the European Copernicus programme brings an important contribution to the provision of Earth Observation data.
Sentinel-3, which is about to be launched, will provide crucial observations of our oceans, helping us to understand the overall health of our planet. It will provide daily data with global coverage about the key ocean’s parameters, such as height of sea, wind speeds over the oceans, temperature of water or ocean colour.
Source: Copernicus