Only five days left to take part in an international competition for the best satellite imagery of the Earth's climate change. The photos will be reviewed by representatives of the European Space Agency (ESA), European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), Polish Space Agency (POLSA), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the organiser, Polish CloudFerro. The competition is free and open to all.
In a recently published annual Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, scientists make gloomy predictions about our future on Earth. Over 120 researchers around the world list extreme drought and rising sea levels as major concerns. By participating in ‘Seize the beauty of our planet’ contest participants can show those events through satellite ‘photography’ to motivate others to care more about our planet.
To take part in the competition, you only need to submit one satellite image of the Earth, generated on one of the three public platforms developed and operated by CloudFerro: the European CREODIAS, WEkEO or the German CODE-DE. Every day, these platforms receive and process around 25 terabytes of images from the satellites of the EU’s Copernicus Earth Observation programme. This is a huge amount of data, which can be compared to more than 12 thousand hours of HD video, or 7.5 million photos taken with a 12-megapixel camera.
The theme of this year's competition is "Together for Green Earth!". The image should demonstrate environmental changes and/or natural disasters as captured by satellites in recent years.
Preparing a contest entry does not take more than an hour, and those who work with satellite data on daily basis will do it in less than 20 minutes. The image can come from any satellite of the Copernicus programme, either optical or radar one. Participants are free to choose different visualisation and processing techniques, such as classification and change detection.
We are looking for images portraying ongoing climate change or phenomena such as wildfires, floods, droughts, melting glaciers or the decreasing forest covers. You can also experiment with infrared and different spectral indices.
- Klaudia Bielińska, EO Product Manager at CloudFerro suggests.
There are many types of free data processing and visualisation software available on the market, such as QGIS or SNAP, which can be used to prepare a competition entry. Experts from CloudFerro and EUMETSAT prepared an online workshop followed by a Q&A session where the attendees can learn step by step how to generate and prepare satellite images. It takes place on October 26 and as a recording will be available on CloudFerro YouTube channel. Detailed terms and conditions and an entry form are available on the competition website. The closing date for submitting the images is October 31, 2021.
