Fifty-five doctoral level Chinese scientists from 30 institutes have gathered at the prestigious Peking University in Beijing in the People's Republic of China to attend a six-day advanced training course devoted to atmosphere monitoring over China using ESA remote sensing instruments.

ESA and the National Remote Sensing Centre of China (NRSCC) are sponsoring the course under the framework of the Dragon Programme a wide-ranging research initiative designed to encourage increased exploitation of ESA remote sensing satellite data within China as well as stimulate increased scientific co-operation in the field of Earth Observation (EO) science and applications between China and Europe.

"International cooperation and coordination are needed to sustain Earth Observation systems. Access to and use of data and products obtained from satellites and ground-based observations require transfer of know-how to the young generation of scientists emerging in many countries and worrying about the endangered Earth and its future," Prof. Paul Simon from the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (IASB) said. "Advanced training courses such as the Dragon ones are an important tool to adequately address this challenge at the beginning of the 21st century." "With the Dragon training, European atmospheric scientists and young Chinese researchers have an excellent opportunity to exchange their scientific concepts, share experiences and establish new cooperation while making extensive use of satellite data," Prof. Hendrik Elbern of the Rhenish Institute of Environmental Research at the University of Cologne said.

The course, being held from 16 to 21 October, is aimed at teaching the students about the different atmospheric instruments aboard ESA's Envisat and ERS-2 satellites and training the students to apply tools and use the complementary atmospheric data sets for applications like air pollution monitoring, ozone trend monitoring and stratospheric a
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Contact: Mariangela D'Acunto
mariangela.dacunto@esa.int
39-069-418-0856
European Space Agency
20-Oct-2006