The GRASP team will take part in the upcoming Living Planet Symposium 2025 (LPS25), organized by the European Space Agency. The event will gather the Earth observation community to discuss the latest scientific developments, operational applications, and future missions. As part of the program, GRASP-related research will be featured in multiple sessions covering topics such as aerosol characterization, multi-instrument data synergy, and atmospheric composition retrievals. In addition, two live demonstrations will present key capabilities of the GRASP algorithm and its applications.
The Living Planet Symposium is one of the largest Earth observation conferences in the world. Organized by the European Space Agency, it brings together scientists, researchers, industry professionals, and decision-makers to discuss the latest findings in Earth science, advances in remote sensing technologies, and applications for monitoring and understanding the planet. The symposium showcases results from ESA missions, fosters international collaboration, and promotes the development of innovative Earth observation methods and tools. Sessions cover a broad range of topics, including climate change, atmosphere, land, ocean, and disaster risk management.
Session D.02.09 – Multi-instrument synergy as a tool to maximize the positive impact on the advancement of the aerosol global characterization from satellite observations
The presentation discusses the realization of the multi-instrument synergy as a powerful approach to maximize the positive impact of the advanced satellite capabilities for improving characterization of atmospheric aerosol at global scale. We discuss the realization of the multi-instrument synergy in the framework of ESA AIRSENSE and EU PANORAMA projects using versatile GRASP algorithm (Dubovik et al, 2021). The algorithm is designed for interpreting of diverse remote sensing observations, and, therefore it is suitable for realizing synergetic processing of observations from multiple sensors (…) | Link to session
Session A.04.03 – Combined retrieval of XCO₂, XCH₄ and aerosol properties from SWIR spectrometric and multiangle polarimetric measurements with GRASP algorithm
One of the primary challenges in achieving the necessary precision in satellite retrievals of XCO₂ and XCH₄ is accurately characterizing atmospheric aerosols. Multiangular-Polarimetric measurements (MAP) represent the most advanced approach for understanding aerosol properties from space-borne platforms. Conversely, the optimal sensitivity to CO₂ and CH₄ concentrations, while minimizing scattering effects, is typically found within the SWIR-1 and SWIR-2 spectral bands. As a result, upcoming Copernicus missions such as Sentinel-7 CO2M or MetOp-SG Sentinel-5 with 3MI onboard are equipped with both MAP and SWIR spectrometric measurements(…) | Link to session
Session C.02.14 – EarthCARE ATLID and passive instruments synergy for advanced retrieval of aerosol vertical profiles
Here we present the ESA-supported “EarthCARE ATLID and MSI instruments Synergy for advanced retrieval of aerosol vertical profiles” (ECAMS) project that is focused on advancing the synergy of passive and active observations by combining L1 products of EarthCARE and various imagers. More specifically, it proposes to realise aerosol retrievals using the fusion of L1 observations from lidar (ATLID) and imagers deployed on EarthCARE (MSI) and PACE (SPEXone, HARP-2), as well as on other advanced missions. Such deep synergy retrievals based on the fusion of L1 observations is the methodologically most promising (…) | Link to session
Session A.01.04 – Does heterogeneous surface affect the aerosol and surface retrievals from satellite observations?
Global information on aerosol and surface properties derived from satellite observations is essential for Earth climate studies. Although recent advances in the fields of satellite remote sensing data acquisition and processing have led to significant improvements in the retrieval of aerosol properties, discrepancies still exist among the various satellite data sets and between observation and simulation. All aerosol retrieval methods from space-borne observations rely on the so-called one-dimensional (1D) atmospheric approximation whereby the atmosphere is represented as a series of horizontally infinite homogeneous layers above a uniform flat surface (…) | Link to session
Session A.01.06 – Synergetic retrieval from multi-instrument measurements for advancing aerosol and surface characterisation in global scale and at high temporal resolution
For number of climate studies the extended aerosol and surface characteristics in global scale are required. This includes such properties as Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD), size distribution, Single Scattering albedo, full surface BRDF etc. This is relevant, in particular, for generation of high-quality aerosol and surface essential climate variables (ECVs) product, air-quality monitoring, aerosol emission and transport studies etc. In addition to the global scale, the extended aerosol properties with high temporal resolution are required for such important but challenging studies as aerosol-cloud interactions, gas-to-particle transformation, and aerosol dynamic in general (…) | Link to session
DEMO A.01.16 – How to add your own forward model in the GRASP version 2.0.0 retrieval framework
GRASP (Generalized Retrieval of Atmosphere and Surface Properties, Dubovik et al., 2021) is a flexible tool, designed to retrieve aerosol, gas and surface properties for a wide variety of sensors and the combination of them. It is a proven tool, applied to a wide range of different combinations of instruments, for example: active and passive (lidar and sunphotometer), spectrometers and photometers (Pandora and AERONET), Multi-Angular Polarimeters and hyperspectral sensors (CO2M/MAP and CO2M/CO2I, S5/UVNS and 3MI). In the framework of the OPERA-S5 project, GRASP version 2.0.0 has been developed to transform the original code (…) | Link to demo
DEMO A.01.17 – Demonstration of an integrated approach for the validation and exploitation of atmospheric missions
DIVA (Demonstration of an Integrated approach for the Validation and exploitation of Atmospheric missions) is a python jupyter notebook-based platform aiming to collect, handle, and exploit atmospheric data from ground-based remote sensing instruments, and to build new synergies beyond the operational products. Throughout its design and development stages, DIVA had demonstrated the capability and versatility of such a system to integrate ground-based (lidar, ceilometer, sun/lunar photometer, and spectrometer), satellite and model data, stand-alone, and synergetic algorithms for advanced data products (…)| Link to demo
More information is available on the LPS 2025 official website.
