Envisat fishes up facts behind Chilean giant squid invasion
These jumbo flying squid Dosidicus gigas is their Latin name are some of the largest known squids on the planet: the ones here measure between 70 to 150 centimetres in length, although specimens have been known to reach more than three metres. Making their home in the open ocean, they rise to the surface at night to aggressively feed on small fish using barbed suckers. ...In the final days of...Envisat concludes a busy second year in orbit
Two years on this lorry-sized spacecraft operates nominally in the extreme environment of space; it circles the world every hundred minutes at a speed of seven kilometres per second while its ten onboard instruments gather a mass of data about the terrestrial environment. ...More than 70 different types of information products derived from Envisat data are now available. Fresh products will add...Envisat observes resurgent ozone hole
The ozone hole is normally at its largest in September, but 2002 saw it at its smallest extent for more than a decade: 40% down on previous years. And a year ago yesterday ongoing satellite measurements of ozone - gathered by the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI) from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) instrument on ESA's ERS-2 satellite - showed it splitting in two. ..."Usi...Envisat radar altimetry tracks river levels worldwide
Next week ESA previews a new product range called River and Lake Level from Altimetry that provides previously inaccessible information on water levels of major lakes and rivers across the Earth's surface, derived from Envisat and ERS radar altimeter measurements. ...Hydrologists can use this new data to monitor river heights around the planet, assess the impact of global warming and help with wa...Envisat focuses on carbon-rich peat swamp forest fires
Fires occur often during the dry season on the South East Asian island of Borneo, but it isn't only the forests that burn. Lowland tropical peat swamps are formed from layers of woody debris too waterlogged to fully decompose. Slowly deposited over thousands of years, the carbon-rich peat strata have been known to reach a thickness of up to 20 metres. ... ...By rights these humid peat swamps shou...Envisats ASAR reveals extent of massive oil spill off Spanish coast
Oil from the wrecked tanker off the northwest coast of Spain had already reached the Spanish coast when ESA's Envisat satellite acquired this radar image of the oil slick, stretching more than 150 km, on Sunday, 17 November, at 10.45 UTC.... ...The 26-year-old tanker, Prestige, can be seen as a bright white point located about 100 km off the coast. Support vessels are identifiable as smaller whi...