GMES will provide accurate, up-to-date and globally-available information on an operational basis for services and applications related to land, sea/ocean and atmospheric monitoring as well as to emergency response and security in support of European policies.
On behalf of the European Union, ESA manages the GMES space component and develops new dedicated satellites, called the Sentinels missions.

The five Sentinel families under development since 2007 will feature radar and super-spectral imaging as well as ocean and atmospheric monitoring capacities. In addition, ESA will take the role of interim operator of Sentinel-1, -2 and -3 (land part) while EUMETSAT will be the operator of Sentinel-3 (marine part), -4 and -5.


The Sentinel missions are primarily designed to provide routine observations for operational services. However, considering the manifold instrumentations with different spectral and spatial resolutions, the global coverage with high revisit times, and the long-term operational commitments, the Sentinel missions are also very attractive for studying and monitoring processes relevant for various scientific disciplines with time-scales spanning decades.

The session is intended to provide a discussion forum for new scientific ideas to utilize global monitoring satellite data. The session will discuss the the GMES/Sentinel activities, provide technical outlines of the missions and emphasizes the usefulness of the Global Monitoring Satellite missions for different Earth science disciplines including preliminary results from preparatory activities.