EOC Blogs

September 21, 2021

Aerial campaign on the Aletsch Glacier

The Aletsch Glacier is a glacier of superlatives. With a length of over 22 kilometers and a thickness of up to 900 meters, it is the largest glacier in the Alps. One fifth of the total ice mass in Switzerland is stored by the Aletsch Glacier alone. Of course, climate change is not leaving the Aletsch Glacier unscathed. How has snow cover changed in the Aletsch-Jungfrau region in recent decades? How much mass does the glacier lose per year? For two weeks at the beginning of September, a DLR team will use high-resolution aerial images and various satellite sensors to get to the bottom of these and other questions as part of the Polar Monitor project.

September 9, 2020

World Settlement Footprint - Where do humans live?

by Mattia Marconcini; 09 September 2020 After three years of meticulous data processing and comprehensive quality control, the World Settlement Footprint 2015 is now available. With a resolution of 10 metres, the new world map reveals settlement structures on Earth in 2015.

September 1, 2020

BLOG: Happy Birthday DFD, IMF, EOC

Anniversaries briefly interrupt the flow of our fast-paced lives and clear the way for a look back to the past as well as forward to the future. After last year’s major event celebrating 40 Years DFD, in Neustrelitz at least, the 25th anniversary of our robot archive is on the agenda. It is perhaps worth glancing back to that time of ferment when, among other changes, the integration of the Neustrelitz ground station as part of DFD was well advanced, but by no means complete. Combining two until then autonomously-functioning entities involves practical matters such as information channels and administrative changes like cost accounts, but it must also take place in parallel in the minds of all those involved.

September 25, 2019

BLOG: With Agulhas II into "perennial ice": progress report

t began toward the end of September 2019 in a discussion with Dr. Christine Wesche of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). The idea of using a supply trip by the icebreaker S.A. Agulhas II to the AWI Antarctic station to conduct some research at the same time evolved in a few weeks with the support of DLR, AWI, and not least also my family, into a concrete plan....

July 25, 2017

BLOG: Larsen C - TerraSAR-X observes breakup of the iceberg

July 25, 2017 - October 10, 2017; We have read a lot in the media in the last few days about the huge iceberg that has come loose on the Larsen C Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. The fact that iceberg break-offs from ice shelves are natural occurrences and that they occur again and again in the Antarctic was correctly presented in the media reports.

October 26, 2016

BLOG: The TIDEx Campaign on Darwin Glacier

The cryosphere is an important part of “System Earth”. An understanding of ice and snow is of paramount interest in a period when global climate change has become a hot topic. Today, space-borne sensors deliver global views of the polar regions. When combined with measurements from field campaigns, they provide us with an in-depth knowledge of the cryosphere in a changing environment. Together with partners from New Zealand, our colleague Dana Floricioiu stays at the Darwin glacier in the Transantarctic Mountains. In a field campaign, lasting for six weeks, measurements will reveal relevant parameters of this glacier. The results achieved permit to understand how such outlet glaciers behave in detail and help to interpret space-borne data acquired over that region.