Passive microwave remote sensing provides unique pan-Arctic light- and cloud-independent daily coverage of lead fraction (LF) for Arctic winter and spring. In this study, we conducted a quantitative assessment of various sea ice concentration (SIC) data products and LF retrieval algorithms to evaluate their accuracy in deriving lead fractions at both overall and pixel-wise levels. Our results indicate

Satellite-based measurements have emerged as an effective method for the top-down estimates of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Changes in the column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of CO2 (XCO2) in the atmosphere reflect contributions from both human activities and natural processes, posing challenges in accurately extracting anthropogenic XCO2 signals and quantifying urban CO2 emissions. Here, we introduce

With the rapid advancement of remote sensing technology, the recognition of agricultural field parcels using time-series remote sensing images has become an increasingly emphasized task. In this paper, we focus on identifying crops within scattered, irregular, and poorly defined agricultural fields in many Asian regions. We select two representative locations with small and scattered parcels and construct

Soil moisture (SM) is a key variable in hydrometeorology and climate systems. With the growing interest in capturing fine-scale SM variability for effective hydroclimate applications, spaceborne L-band bistatic radar systems using Global Navigation Satellite System-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) technology hold great potential to meet the demand for high spatiotemporal resolution SM data. Although primarily

Satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is inevitably contaminated by clouds and aerosols, causing large uncertainties in depicting the seasonal and interannual variations of terrestrial ecosystems, and potentially misrepresents their responses to climate change and climate extremes. Although various methods have been developed to reconstruct NDVI time series using the similarity

Community Open Spaces (COS) refer to the fine-grained and micro-open areas within communities that offer residents convenient opportunities for social interaction and health benefits. The mapping of COS using Very High Resolution (VHR) imagery can provide critical community-scale data for monitoring urban sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, the three-dimensional structure of COS often results

Near-infrared reflectance of vegetation multiplied by incoming sunlight (NIRvP) is important for gross primary production (GPP) estimation. While NIRvP is a useful indicator of canopy structure and solar radiation, its association with heat or moisture stress is not fully understood. Thus, this research aimed to explore the impact of air temperature (Ta) and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) on the NIRvP-GPP

Separation of soil effects from top-of-canopy (TOC) reflectance is crucial for quantitative remote sensing of vegetation. Soil affects TOC reflectance via the soil-vegetation interaction and the direct reflection by soil. Various vegetation indices have been developed semi-empirically to mitigate the interferences caused by soil for specific applications, such estimating biomass and monitoring vegetation

Plant functional traits are key drivers of ecosystem processes. However, plot-based monitoring of functional composition across both large spatial and temporal extents is a time-consuming and expensive undertaking. Airborne and satellite remote sensing platforms collect data across large spatial expanses, often repeatedly over time, raising the tantalising prospect of detection of biodiversity change

Successful surface soil moisture (SM) retrieval from space has been enabled by microwave satellite measurements of Earth's upwelling brightness temperature (TB). Nevertheless, correction for the impact of vegetation on TB emission remains a challenge for SM retrieval algorithms. Such correction is often performed in a simplified manner. For example, the Single Channel Algorithm (SCA) uses ancillary

Terrestrial vegetation is a crucial component of Earth's biosphere, regulating global carbon and water cycles and contributing to human welfare. Despite an overall greening trend, terrestrial vegetation exhibits a significant inter-annual variability. The mechanisms driving this variability, particularly those related to climatic and anthropogenic factors, remain poorly understood, which hampers our

Runoff variability in glacierized transboundary river basins over High Mountain Asia (HMA) directly affects the stability of water supply for more than one billion people in Asia. However, limited by insufficient in-situ gauges and imprecise hydrological model output, it is still a challenge to accurately monitor and comprehensively analyze the HMA runoff change. In this paper, we construct a water

Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) is a promising tool to estimate gross primary production (GPP), but the retrieval of SIF is commonly noisy and highly sensitive to various interference factors. Particularly, the retrieval of SIF in the red band (RSIF) is more challenging than in the far-red SIF (FRSIF) due to the weaker fluorescence signal and the weaker absorption depth of oxygen at the

Long-distance hiking trails worldwide serve as vital ‘threads’ connecting vast wilderness areas, offering unique opportunities to evaluate progress toward the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, their extensive lengths pose challenges for data collection, limiting their potential use in sustainable development research. Remote sensing technologies, such as high-spatial-resolution

Land-surface reflectance (LSR) is a basic physical retrieval in terrestrial monitoring. The potential for high-frequency surface product estimation was evident in third-generation Geostationary Earth Orbit (3rd-GEO) satellites, substantially improving spectral, spatial, and temporal resolutions. Intercomparisons with LSR products from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites have been employed as a common

The intensity and spectral properties of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) carry valuable information on plant photosynthesis and productivity, but are also influenced by leaf and canopy structure. Physically based models provide a quantitative means to investigate how SIF intensity and spectra propagate and scale from the photosystem to the leaf and to the canopy levels. However, the validation

Sea state information is critical for a broad range of human activities (e.g. shipping, marine energy, marine engineering) most of them being concentrated along the coastal zone. Satellite altimeter records of significant wave heights (SWH) represent the largest source of sea state observations available to date. However, the quality of altimeter observations is reduced in the coastal zone due to surface

The physical drivers of Sentinel-1 C-band backscatter observations during snow accumulation are still uncertain. To investigate these, backscatter fluctuations (in co-polarization VV, cross-polarization VH, and cross-polarization ratio VH-VV) were temporally and spatially linked to modeled surface (0–10 cm) soil moisture (SM) and soil temperature (T) (here referred to as soil dynamics) and modeled

To improve the data availability of SAR mode altimeters in coastal zones, we propose a new Adaptive Subwaveform Coastal Retracker (ASCR) and include the empirical coastal retracker ITAS (Improved Threshold Adaptive Subwaveform) and the full-waveform coastal retracker MSCR (Modified SAMOSA+ Coastal Retracker) for comparison in this study. The Sentinel-3A/B altimeter data during the period between January

Forest floor vegetation plays a crucial role in ecosystem processes of temperate and boreal forests. Remote sensing offers a valuable tool to characterize the forest floor through reflectance spectra. While passive optical airborne and satellite data have been used to map spectral properties of forest understory, these sensors are limited by cloud cover, especially in high latitudes. To date, LiDAR

In the context of global climate change, extreme hydrological events frequently occurred worldwide, impacting global and regional hydrological cycles. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) can provide innovative solutions for terrestrial water storage (TWS) estimation from different perspectives, thereby identifying and detecting extreme drought

Surface ozone (O3) is a critical ambient pollutant that poses significant risks to both human health and ecosystems. However, there is a scarcity of high-spatial-resolution hourly surface O3 data, which is crucial for understanding its diurnal variations. In this study, we employed a best-performing spatiotemporal artificial intelligence (AI) model to estimate 24-hourly 1-km-resolution surface O3 concentrations

Over the past two decades, climate change has led to the intensification of the hydrologic cycle and greatly altered global land evapotranspiration (ET). Existing low-resolution evapotranspiration datasets, though valuable for global estimates, does not fully capture spatial heterogeneity and local-scale effects, necessitating the need for higher-resolution assessment of field-scale ET for enhanced

Ponds are an important source of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to the atmosphere, yet evaluating their role in global biogeochemical cycling is currently hampered by limitations in quantifying their global distribution. Existing satellite-derived estimates of lake distributions have difficulty identifying small lakes (5–10 ha) and ponds (<5 ha) due to limitations in satellite resolution and challenges extracting

Urban vegetation phenology is essential for understanding climate change impacts on urban ecosystems, offering insights into ecological and health implications. Although previous studies have explored the response patterns of vegetation phenology along the urban-rural gradient, quantitative analysis considering the neighborhood and scale effects is still insufficient. In this study, we comprehensively

Milne Glacier is a marine-terminating glacier located on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic, a region that has experienced extensive ice-mass loss over the last two decades. Milne Glacier flows into Milne Fiord where it transitions from grounded to floating at its grounding line. The glacier rests on a retrograde slope and is therefore potentially vulnerable to marine

Identifying materials and retrieving their properties from spectral imagery is based on their spectral reflectance calculated from the ratio of reflected radiance to the incident irradiance. However, obtaining the true reflectances of materials within a vegetation canopy is challenging given the varying illumination conditions across the canopy – i.e., the irradiance incident on a surface inside the

The pronounced impact of topography on meteorological conditions has largely limited evapotranspiration (ET) remote sensing techniques to relatively flat terrains. This study addresses this limitation by adapting and assessing the performance of two common ET models based on thermal infrared data in rugged mountainous regions: a physically-based energy balance model (TSEB-PT), and a contextual model

A large part of the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) and the margins of Antarctica are melting every summer, affecting their surface mass balance. Wet/dry snow status has been detected for decades using the peaks of brightness temperature at 19 GHz, and more recently at L-band (1.4 GHz) using both the SMOS and SMAP missions. SMOS owns a longer time series than SMAP with data since 2010, but

Forests provide important ecosystem functions such as carbon sequestration and climate regulation, particularly in countries with high forest cover. Climate change-induced extreme weather events have a negative impact on many forest ecosystems. In Germany, for instance, the drought of the years 2018 until 2020 resulted in signs of damage in almost 80% of trees. This decline in forest vitality has additionally

Satellite products provide the best way to monitor the solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface on a global scale. However, their capability to monitor solar radiation trends needs to be constantly evaluated. This depends on their temporal stability and the accurate representation of all processes driving solar radiation. This study evaluates these aspects by comparing and cross-comparing different

The dependence of L-band Vegetation Optical Depth (L-VOD, τ) on Vegetation temperature TV is investigated for 1165 boreal forest grid cells selected for latitudes > 55° and high radiometric forest fraction FFO≥90%. SMOS Level-3 Brightness Temperatures (BT) at ascending orbits acquired from 2011 to 2022 are used. This is a spatio-temporal extension of our previous study on τTV made over the “Sodankylä

Land surface temperature (LST) is the key parameter for characterizing the water and energy balance of the Earth’ surface. At present, thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing provides the most efficient way to obtain accurate LST regionally and globally. Among existing satellites, the Landsat-9 could observe the Earth's surface via two TIR channels, making it possible to generate the global LST product

This paper describes an approach to analyze ground deformation data collected by InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) imaging the volcano feeding system (VFS) beneath a caldera. The approach is applied to the Campi Flegrei caldera in southern Italy, a densely populated area at high risk for volcanic eruption. The method is a 4D tomographic inversion that considers a combination of 3D pressure

China successfully launched the Atmospheric Environment Monitoring Satellite (AEMS) equipped with an Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Lidar (ACDL) on April 16, 2022, which is the world's first satellite based on Integrated Path Differential Absorption (IPDA) technique to detect the atmospheric CO2 column-weighted dry-air mixing ratio (XCO2). In order to accurately and quickly process the AEMS measurements

The authors regret that several errors were identified in the captions of Fig. 1, 11 and 15, as well as in a referenced citation in Section 3.3 and 4.4 of this publication.

Warming in the Third Pole region accelerates glacier and snow melt, leading to a rise in glacial lake numbers and sizes. However, accurately measuring their water level changes poses challenges, hindering precise volume assessments and evaluation of glacier mass balance contributions. Here, we took the Ak-Shyirak glaciers and the largest Petrov proglacial lake in the Central Tien Shan as a case study

The terrestrial water storage anomaly (TWSA), derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its successor, the GRACE Follow-on (GRACE-FO) satellite, presents a remarkable opportunity for extreme weather detection and the enhancement of environmental protection. However, the practical utility of GRACE data is challenged by an 11-month data gap and several months of missing data

Sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) has recently emerged as a proxy for canopy photosynthesis of vegetation and offers a promising approach for scalable remote crop monitoring. Effective application of SIF for crop monitoring requires better understanding of the processes that cause SIF-photosynthesis decoupling at leaf and canopy scales. To answer this challenge, we developed a novel automated

The early detection of forest pests and diseases is a primary focus of remote sensing applications for forest health monitoring. Pine Wilt Disease (PWD), which causes significant damage to pine resources in many countries and regions, has been a key area where the close-range hyperspectral remote sensing has demonstrated its advantages for early diagnosis. However, it remains unclear whether PWD can

The Earth's climate is changing rapidly and unexpectedly, causing more frequent, longer and more severe droughts, with lasting impacts on plants, ecosystems, communities and people. Consequently, this is leading to an increased importance of monitoring the climate and water storage trends in different regions. This information on a global scale is already commonly derived using satellite-based geodetic

The split-window (SW) and temperature-and-emissivity separation (TES) algorithms have been widely used for land surface temperature (LST) estimation from thermal infrared (TIR) observations for various missions. However, the SW algorithm requires prior estimates of land surface emissivity (LSE). The TES algorithm encompasses an atmospheric correction module, which increases the complexity and uncertainty

Mangroves in tropical and subtropical coasts are subject to episodic disturbances, notably from severe storms, leading to potential widespread vegetation mortality. The ability of vegetation to recover varies, and with disturbances becoming more frequent and severe, it is vital to track and project vegetation responses to support management and policy decisions. Prior studies have largely focused on

Identifying changes in volcanic unrest and tracking eruptive activity are fundamental for volcanic surveillance and monitoring. Magmatic gases, particularly sulphur dioxide (SO2), play a crucial role in influencing eruptive styles, making the monitoring of SO2 emissions essential. Recent advancements in satellite remote sensing technology, including higher spatial resolution and sensitivity, have enhanced

Avian diversity, a key indicator of ecosystem health, is closely related to canopy structure. Most avian diversity models are based on either optical remote sensing or airborne lidar data, but the latter is limited to small study areas. The launch of the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) instrument in 2018 has opened new avenues for exploring the influence of vegetation structure on avian

Lake bathymetry is important for quantifying and characterizing underwater morphology and its geophysical state, which is critical for hydrological and ecological studies. Due primarily to the harsh environment of the Tibetan Plateau, there is a severe lack of lake bathymetry measurements, limiting the accurate estimation of total lake volumes and their evolutions. Here, we propose a novel lake bathymetry

Information on rice planting areas is critically important for food and water security, as well as for adapting to climate change. Mapping rice globally remains challenging due to the diverse climatic conditions and various rice cropping systems worldwide. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, which is immune to climatic conditions, plays a vital role in rice mapping in cloudy, rainy, low-latitude regions

Improving our understanding of the energy and water exchanges between the land surface and the lower atmosphere (i.e. land–atmosphere interactions), and how climate change may affect them, is crucial to predict changes in temperature and precipitation extremes. Observations of energy and water fluxes at the land surface are typically retrieved from the eddy covariance method, which presents limitations

Climate change has intensified flooding in arid and semi-arid regions, presenting a major challenge for flood monitoring and mapping. While satellites, particularly Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), allow synoptically observing flood extents, accurately differentiating between sandy terrains and water for arid region flooding remains an open challenge. Current global flood mapping products exclude arid

The Earth surface Mineral dust source InvesTigation (EMIT) is an imaging spectrometer launched to the International Space Station in July 2022 to measure the mineral composition of Earth’s dust-producing regions. We present a systematic accuracy assessment of the EMIT surface reflectance product in two parts. First, we characterize the surface reflectance product’s overall performance using multiple

Remote sensing has the potential to dramatically advance river discharge monitoring globally, but precision of primary data (water surface elevation (WSE) and river width) remains a limiting factor. WSE can be measured from altimeters, and river width from imagers, but the measurements historically have not been made concurrently from space. This is changing with the advent of the Surface Water and

Urban heat island (UHI) is among the most pronounced human impacts on Earth. To formulate locally adapted mitigation strategies, a comprehensive understanding of the influencing mechanisms of UHI at high resolution is imperative. Based on surface energy balance, we attributed surface UHI (SUHI) into five biophysical terms (surface radiation, anthropogenic heat, convection, evapotranspiration and heat

Traditional forest inventory supplies essential data for forest monitoring and management, including tree species, but obtaining individual tree-level information is increasingly crucial. Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) with multispectral observation offers rich information for improved forest inventory mapping with reliable individual tree attributes. Although deep learning techniques

Cities worldwide face escalating climate change risks, underscoring the need for spatially and temporally resolved urban air temperature (Ta) data. While satellite-derived land surface temperature (LST) data have been widely used to estimate Ta, high-resolution hourly Ta estimation in urban areas remains underexplored. Traditional methods typically rely on LST data from geostationary satellites and

Detecting early signs of impending eruptions and monitoring the evolution of volcanic phenomena are fundamental objectives of applied volcanology, both essential for timely assessment of associated hazards. Thermal remote sensing proves to be a cost-effective, yet reliable, information source for these purposes, especially for the hundreds of volcanoes still lacking conventional ground-based monitoring

Flood maps based on Earth Observation (EO) data inform critical decision-making in almost every stage of the disaster management cycle, directly impacting the ability of affected individuals and governments to receive aid as well as informing policies on future adaptation. However, flood map validation also presents a challenge in the form of class imbalance between flood and non-flood classes, which

Interregional transport plays a significant role in haze formation with varying and disputable contribution extent. Current research on quantitatively analyzing interregional atmospheric pollution transport has mainly relied on meteorological and chemical models. However, these models are typically affected by uncertainties due to the assumptions and simplifications inherent in the numerical simulations