ESA EO Open Science Newsletter

News from EO Open Science

JANUARY 2026

Highlights: EarthCODE releases the new Portal, Results from ESA Science Hub Challenge, ESA DeepExtremes Project receives FAIR Data Management Award, Fuelity Fuel Data now available at EarthCODE, Heino Tooming Award 2025 awarded to ESA Science Hub Research Fellow, Survey on In Situ Data Practices.

The ESA EO Open Science team

Highlights

NEW PORTAL RELEASE FOR EarthCODE

EarthCODE has recently released a new version of its portal, with more streamlined access to the Open Science Catalogue, the Documentation, Examples and tutorials on FAIR practices, and the Forum.

Importantly, users can now sign in to the EarthCODE workspace to use the FAIR data publishing tools and access all the integrated platforms with single sign on.

ESA SCIENCE HUB CHALLENGE OUTCOMES: TEAM ENHANCES VEGETATION MONITORING

The Earth System Science Hub Challenge, hosted by ESA at ESRIN, took place from 8-11 September 2025, bringing together students from the several Universities. One team from the University of Leeds focused on evaluating time series interpolation techniques for vegetation monitoring using Earth observation data. Their study aimed to compare methods for filling gaps in NDVI time series, which are essential for tracking vegetation health, using DeepESDL resources.

ESA DeepExtremes Project receives FAIR Data Management Award

The DeepExtremes Project received the regional award “SaxFDM Open Data Award 2025” for the research data management . The DeepExtremes database maps compound heatwave and drought extremes, focusing on persistent natural vegetation. It comprises over 40,000 globally sampled small data cubes (i.e. minicubes), with a spatial coverage of 2.5 by 2.5 km. Each minicube includes (i) Sentinel-2 L2A images, (ii) ERA5-Land variables and generated extreme event cube covering 2016 to 2022, and (iii) ancillary land cover and topography maps. These minicubes are now available in EarthCODE.

ACCESS DATACUBES IN EarthCODE

Fuelity Fuel Moisture Content Dataset

The dataset provides global, daily estimates of live and dead fuel load and fuel moisture at ~9 km resolution by combining satellite-derived biomass with a bias-corrected carbon-flux model to represent temporally evolving fuel conditions. It delivers the first multi-year global observation-informed record of fuel characteristics suitable for analyzing historical fire behavior and improving data-driven fire prediction. During the Fuelity project, a better representation of the Live fuel moisture content was developed by integrating VOD and SIF observations. This resource adds value by supplying consistent, ready-to-use fuel variables, enabling more robust assessment of fire–climate interactions. The dataset is designed for the wildfire research community, fire-danger and forecasting agencies, climate-impact analysts, and developers of modelling systems that depend on fuel inputs.

ACCESS DATASET IN EarthCODE

Heino Tooming Award 2025 goes to ESA Science Hub Research Fellow Blanka Piskala

Blanka Piskala, research fellow at the ESA Science Hub, has been awarded the

Heino Tooming Award 2025 by the European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL) for her team’s innovative research on lightning and convective storms. The awarded work introduces a new multi-satellite approach combining EarthCARE observations with next-generation geostationary lightning sensors, including MTG Lightning Imager and GOES-GLM, to link storm internal structure with lightning evolution

SURVEY: IN SITU DATA SHARING PRACTICES

The ESA Earth System Science Hub is leading a survey responding to feedback received during ESA events and consultations with the community, in order to understand in situ data sharing practices and attitudes in the remote sensing for agriculture research community. You are invited to participate in this anonymous survey which will help ESA to understand how the community shares data and what factors shape researcher's decisions to share.

SURVEY

Follow us on social media:

Highlights

GET INVOLVED