EU's Copernicus Programme and EUMETSAT to Highlight What Satellites Can Tell Us About Oceans in New Online Course

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October 6, 2016
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EU's Copernicus Programme and EUMETSAT to Highlight What Satellites Can Tell Us About Oceans in New Online Course

DARMSTADT, Germany, October 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

    Tracking the paths of storms and the spread of pollution, helping improve maritime
safety and weather forecasting, supporting fisheries and monitoring the effects of climate
change are just some of the myriad uses of data from ocean-monitoring satellites.

    EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites,
is offering anyone with an interest in learning more about the monitoring of oceans from
space a free, five-week massive open online course (MOOC).

    The course, starting October 24, is funded by the EU through its flagship Earth
observation environmental programme Copernicus, and will run during a timeframe new data
and products from the Copernicus Sentinel-3A ocean-monitoring satellite, which was
launched in February, progressively become available.

    EUMETSAT Training Manager Dr Mark Higgins said the course would show participants how
to access the wealth of ocean-monitoring data that is being collected by satellites every
day.

    "The course brings together experts from throughout Europe and beyond and shows not
only the sheer amount of data available but also how this data is used to monitor the
health of the oceans," Mark said.

    "This course will explain how it is that we know what we know about the oceans and the
very significant role satellites play in this."

    Topics to be covered in the MOOC include why satellite data are used; oceans and
climate; weather and hazards such as tropical storms, storm surges and icebergs; and
monitoring water quality.

    The course is provided through the online learning platform FutureLearn and it has
been developed for EUMETSAT by Imperative Space in partnership with Plymouth Marine
Laboratory, the National Oceanography Centre (Southampton), CLS France and NASA JPL.

    Sentinel-3A has been described as, "the most beautiful satellite ever built for
oceanography" and will vastly increase the amount of data available about our oceans.

    EUMETSAT is responsible for the day to day operations of Sentinel-3 and for processing
and disseminating its marine data stream.

    One of the main users of the data is the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring
Service (CMEMS), where experts interpret and make available data relating to four key
application areas: marine resources, maritime safety, coastal and marine environment and
climate monitoring.

    CMEMS collaborated in the making of the "Monitoring the Oceans from Space" MOOC.

       
         
        Press Contact: 
        Tel: +49-6151-807-7320 
        Fax: +49-6151-807-7321 
        Email: press@eumetsat.int 
        http://www.eumetsat.int 

     

EUMETSAT

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