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 capacity's. 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 first Sentinel missions are scheduled for launch in 2013

The Sentinel missions are primarily designed to provide routine observations for operational services. However, considering their 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. An accompanied rigorous calibration and validation programme which will ensure consistent high quality data and products including their uncertainty characterisation is being considered mandatory for both, the operational as well as the scientific utilisation of the data stream.

The session is intended to provide a discussion forum for new scientific ideas to utilise the Sentinels data stream. It will provide technical outlines of the mission characteristics and emphasise their usefulness for different Earth science disciplines. This session will also aim to discuss aspects of instrument calibration and product validation with focus on optical instruments and lessons learnt from other missions.

This session is merged from the original session GI2.4: “Calibration and Validation of Optical and Infrared Earth Observation Satellite Instrumentation” and GI2.5: “GMES Sentinel Satellites: New Possibilities for Science” and is co-listed in the programme groups AS, NH and HS, as these science fields benefit directly from the observation and monitoring capabilities of Earth Observation satellites.