This year, NWO awards one of its two Stevin Prizes to Prof. Ilse Aben (SRON/VU) for the societal impact she has achieved with the Dutch space instrument TROPOMI. At SRON, Aben leads the TROPOMI team that weekly publishes a world map of major methane leaks. These leaks have a combined climate impact twice as large as the total greenhouse gas emissions of The Netherlands. Projects by the United Nations and the European Union, among others, use this data to close the leaks through diplomatic channels. The Stevin Prize is the highest Dutch award for the application of knowledge for society and amounts to 1.5 million euros for research.
Month: June 2025
New methane satellite data supporting waste emission mitigation now publicly available
Methane emissions from landfills are a key contributor to climate change. In the TWOS project, SRON works together with the Global Methane Hub, GHGSat, and local partners to support mitigation of those emissions using satellite data. The first data are now publicly available through the WasteMAP platform.
Lost and possibly found: a third of the normal matter in the Universe is missing
A European team of astronomers led by the Netherlands have uncovered a large filament of hot gas connecting four galaxy clusters. The filament contains so-called warm-hot intergalactic medium. The hot gas spans over a distance of 23 million light years, is more than ten million degrees hot, and may be part of what astronomers call the ‘missing normal matter’. The team used two X-ray space telescopes: the Japanese Suzaku and the European XMM-Newton. Publication on June 19th in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
ENW-M1 grant for cloud-aerosol interaction
NWO has awarded SRON researcher Hailing Jia an Open Competition ENW-M1 grant to better map the interaction between clouds and aerosols. The grant enables Hailing to hire a PhD student.
