Watchful eyes over our planet

The Earth Observation program at SRON monitors the atmospheric composition. This expertise was developed over the past decades in a Dutch ecosystem of universities, knowledge institutes, and industrial partners. The Netherlands is world-leading with a series of instruments such as TROPOMI on ESA’s Sentinel-5p satellite and SPEXone on NASA’s PACE satellite.

The UN climate panel warns that our warming climate, caused by human-made emissions, puts the global ecosystem at risk. Several climate tipping points could be triggered this century, leading to large and irreversible changes to the climate system, including consequences for biodiversity and air quality.

To solve these problems, scientists, governments, and international bodies increasingly rely on earth observation data. Satellites provide global and intercomparable information that can be available within hours after observation, for example shortly after a pipeline leak.

SRON scientists use satellites amongst others to spot large methane plumes from individual sources, such as landfills, coal mines and oil and gas fields.

For the United Nations’ Methane Alert and Response System (MARS), together with our partners we have designed a  global system that detects methane plumes. This provides actionable information to reduce emissions of this strong greenhouse gas.