Photonics for a Better World

Next week, on 3 April, a new era will begin in remote-sensing-aided disaster response. The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that the Sentinel-1A radar satellite will be launched from the European spaceport in French Guiana. Sentinel-1, the first in the family of Copernicus satellites, will be used to care for many aspects of our environment, from detecting and tracking oil spills and mapping sea ice to monitoring movement in land surfaces and mapping changes in the way land is used. It will also play a crucial role in providing timely information to help respond to natural disasters and assist in emergency response. Photo: ESA/ATG media lab Sentinel-1 is designed for responding rapidly to aid emergencies and disasters such as flooding and earthquakes. The first satellite carries an advanced radar sensor to image Earth’s surface through cloud and rain and regardless of time of day. Each Sentinel mission is based on a constellation of two sat...

Two polar bears on an iceberg. ©Eric Lefranc/Solent After droughts, floods, and a “superstorm” this year, people everywhere are talking about the weather. Some people taking the long-term view are urging us all to not only talk but to think much more deeply -- and even to do something -- about climate change.  "Something extraordinary is going on in the world,” noted New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof as Hurricane Sandy began to dissipate. In a column headlined, “ Will climate get some respect now? ” Kristof recalled the amazement of Eskimos in Alaska toward the changes they were seeing: "from melting permafrost to robins (for which their Inupiat language has no word), and even a (shivering) porcupine." Across the Atlantic, Fiona Harvey wrote last week in The Guardian under the headline “ Climate change 'likely to be more severe than some models predict' ” that the latest climate models predict higher temperature rises along with m...