In support of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change taking place in Copenhagen, the European Environment Agency hosted the ‘Bend the Trend’ event on Sunday evening to provide a global climate networking platform and premiere the screening of the new ‘Environmental Atlas of Europe’.
The ‘Environmental Atlas of Europe’, a joint project of the European Environment Agency, the UN Environment Programme and ESA, is a series of short films showing the significance of environmental change depicted in comparisons of stunning satellite images through the years and the different ways people are responding to these changes.
ESA provided a variety of up-to-date, captivating satellite images and products from various European satellites. These range from ship ice roads in the Baltic Sea to the river systems of Albania, from a gigantic plankton bloom off the Irish coast to the reduction of agricultural land in south-east Georgia. Each of these images will help to make the viewer understand the environmental, scientific and political issues we are facing today.
It is important for various institutions and actors to work together to team efforts to match space-based data with local, or in-situ, data. Combining space-based measurements with in-situ measurements and other sources like historic weather records and maps help us to understand better climate change and to raise awareness.
EEA is associated with the service development activities in the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security programme. GMES is a joint programme run by the EC and ESA to develop European Earth-observation capacities and monitor climate change. ESA is responsible for the space component of GMES, and EEA is responsible for the in-situ component.
There is a range of pledges to choose from, including using public transportation instead of cars, replacing a holiday return flight in Europe with recreation in your local region, reducing showers to five-minutes, changing to energy-saving light bulbs, eating meat-free meals three days per week, stopping the use of tumble dryers, reducing room temperatures by 1 degree and drinking tap water rather than bottled.
