ESA's sentinel missions in support of Earth system science

The spatial and temporal characteristics of the new Sentinel missions, primarily designed to provide routine multidisciplinary observations for operational services, are also very suitable for addressing some of the challenges associated with advancing Earth System sciences. The Sentinels are ensuring long-term observational commitment and will operate a range of instruments with different spectral bands and spatial resolutions with global coverage and high revisit times. The complexity of Earth System models has been increasing gradually and most simulations of future climate and Earth system evolution are based on coupled models that include aspects of physics, bio/geo-chemistry, anthropogenic impacts and even recently some elements of socioeconomic factors. Sentinels will provide unique observations to describe such coupled atmosphere, oceans, land and cryosphere and the exchanges among them into Earth System models. This paper emphasizes the indispensable value of the data provided by the family of Sentinel constellations in the context of the urgent need for improved process understanding of the Earth system.