The iconic Khumbu Glacier in Nepal is fed by several tributaries, such as this branch in the Lingtren–Khumbutse catchment. Recently a new Pléiades triplet covering the Khumbu region was added into the DINAMIS repository (acquisition date 22 Oct 2023). There is another triplet in the same area acquired on 11 Mar 2016 hence we can […]
People often ask if we can detect artificial snow in satellite images. It’s not so easy except when the surrounding slopes are totally snow-free… But recently, I noticed some anomalous snow accumulations patterns in a satellite-derived map of the snow depth near Super Barèges ski resort (Pyrenees). This map was computed at 2 m resolution […]
In Turkey, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD), affiliated to the Ministry of Interior, has completed the installation of 300 thousand tents in the provinces affected by the earthquakes. On Feb 16, Pléiades captured such installation on the parking of the New Hatay Stadium near Antakya. I count about 400 tents in this picture. […]
Because the first images were partly cloudy, the Pléiades 1A and 1B satellites (CNES/Airbus) continued to acquire images over Kyrgyzstan and a cloud-free 0.7-m stereoscopic pair was acquired 16 July 2022. We could also obtain a 1.5 m SPOT7 stereoscopic pair from the Airbus DS archive thanks to the Dinamis initiative. The latter was taken […]
Last week, Simon Gascoin and I spent quite some time working on the Marmolada event. Just a week-end to rest and Twitter reminded us Monday morning that this summer 2022 was special for glaciers. Not only are they out of balance with the climate and will probably suffer one of their most negative mass balance […]
The deadly Marmolada glacier collapse happened on 3 July 2022. On 6 July 2022, Pléiades 1B (CNES, Airbus DS) acquired a clear-sky stereo pair of the area. From these images we could estimate a detached volume of ice of 65’000 ± 10’000 cubic meters. First, we generated a digital elevation model (DEM) from Pléiades stereo […]
Update 17 June 2021: these images were used in a study published in Science by Shugar et al. (2021) A massive rock and ice avalanche caused the 2021 disaster at Chamoli, Indian Himalaya, doi:10.1126/science.abh4455. The Indian Space Agency (ISRO) activated the International Charter « Space and Major Disasters » to image the area of the disater in […]