Climate risks dwarf Europe's energy crisis, space chief warns
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Director General Josef Aschbacher told Reuters successive heatwaves along with wildfires, shrinking rivers and rising land temperatures as measured from space left no doubt about the toll on agriculture and other industries from climate change.
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Aschbacher said ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite series had measured "extreme" land surface temperatures of more than 45C in Britain, 50C in France and 60C in Spain in recent weeks.
Land surface temperature drives air circulation.
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Together, the programme's six families of Sentinel satellites aim to read the planet's "vital signs" from carbon dioxide to wave height or temperatures of land and oceans.
Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images taken on roughly the same day in June between 2020 and 2022, released by ESA, show how the drought-stricken Po - whose plains sustain a third of Italy's agriculture - has retreated to expose broad sandbank.
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