Saharan sandstorm - Sentinel Success Stories

Copernicus Sentinel-3 captures Saharan sandstorm

In February 2021, a windstorm carried sand from the Sahara to large parts of the Alps and Pyrenees, giving the snow and surrounding area a sepia-coloured nuance, creating a Mars-like ambience.

Strong southerly winds in Africa took the sand into the sky, where atmospheric air currents pushed it northwards. When the sand hit the mountain ranges of Europe it descended, covering the surroundings like an orange blanket.

The OLCI (Ocean and Land Cover Instrument) sensor on the Sentinel-3 mission of the European Union's Copernicus Programme caught the drift of the sandstorm.

Satellite remote sensing and ground-based observations have become widely used to monitor the spatial and temporal distributions of aerosols on a global and local scale.

Copernicus Sentinel-3A was launched on 16 February 2016, followed by its twin on 25 April 2018. Together they supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe's Copernicus environmental monitoring programme.

Carrying four instruments that work in synergy, Copernicus Sentinel-3 is the most complex of all the Sentinel missions. It measures systematically Earth's oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics.

Atmospheric aerosol is the most common type of dispersal system under natural conditions, consisting of solid and liquid particles suspended in the atmosphere.

The cutting-edge instruments onboard Sentinel-3 provide estimates of atmospheric aerosol and clouds, with the SYNERGY Level-2 global Aerosol product containing both retrieved and diagnostic global aerosol parameters in a single dataset.

Aerosol optical depth (AOD) is one of the essential atmospheric parameters for climate change assessment.

Copernicus Sentinel-3 achieves the complex retrieval of aerosol optical thickness, over land and sea, by bringing together the respective strengths of its two optical sensors, thus highlighting the benefit of a multi-instrument platform.

Atmospheric aerosols, such as those from the burning of biomass, dust minerals, volcanic ash, smoke, sea salt and particulate matter, stand out as a result of various natural and anthropogenic influences.