Climate and environment

Abstract

Homo sapiens, as the dominating species, has to use its progress in technology for sustainable development. The prerequisite is a basic understanding of the functioning of the Earth system. This understanding needs global continuous data, i.e., it needs satellite remote sensing or earth observation from space. It also needs Earth system models, whose development stage is just a measure of the sophistication of validation data sets. Thus satellite remote sensing is at the heart of progress in understanding and therefore acts not only as an early warning system for mankind but also offers problem solutions through better understanding. © 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.