ESA Attends South African Climate Conference

Officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) have already made their way to South Africa, where the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties 17 (COP 17) starts today. The event will take place in Durban, between November 28 and December 9.

ESA is present at the meeting in order to stress the undeniable importance of continuing climate observations from aboard highly-advanced satellites. The agency believes strongly that any time of decisions made on the issue of climate would be best-informed by satellite data.

Together with the European Commission Joint Research Center (JRC) and the South African Space Agency (SANSA), ESA will present and defend the necessity of sustaining “systematic climate observations from space,” as the agency puts it in a statement.

At the same time, the organization will also be presenting its Climate Change Initiative and its Sentinel satellite network. The latter is scheduled to go online within in the next couple of years, and its abilities will drastically augment anything the Europeans and Americans have today.