The potential degradation of mainstream global fire products leads to large uncertainty in the effective monitoring of wildfires and their influence. To fill this gap, we produced a Fengyun-3D (FY-3D) global active fire product with a similar spatial and temporal resolution to MODIS fire products, aiming to serve as continuity and a replacement for MODIS fire products. The FY-3D fire product is an ideal tool for global fire monitoring and can be preferably employed for fire monitoring in China.

An Integrated Microwave Radiometry Campaign for Snow (IMCS) was conducted to collect ground-based passive microwave and optical remote-sensing data, snow pit and underlying soil data, and meteorological parameters. The dataset is unique in continuously providing electromagnetic and physical features of snowpack and environment. The dataset is expected to serve the evaluation and development of microwave radiative transfer models and snow process models, along with land surface process models.

Conventional observation networks are too coarse to resolve the horizontal structure of kilometer-scale atmospheric processes. We present the FESST@HH field experiment that took place in Hamburg (Germany) during summer 2020 and featured a dense network of 103 custom-built, low-cost weather stations. The data set is capable of providing new insights into the structure of convective cold pools and the nocturnal urban heat island and variations of local temperature fluctuations.

The GSnow-CHINA data set is a snow depth data set developed using the two Global Navigation Satellite System station networks in China. It includes snow depth of 24, 12, and 2/3/6 h records, if possible, for 80 sites from 2013–2022 over northern China (25–55° N, 70–140° E). The footprint of the data set is ~ 1000 m², and it can be used as an independent data source for validation purposes. It is also useful for regional climate research and other meteorological and hydrological applications.

The longest observational record available to study the mass balance of the Earth’s ice sheets comes from satellite altimeters. This record consists of multiple satellite missions with different measurements and quality, and it must be cross-calibrated and integrated into a consistent record for scientific use. Here, we present a novel approach for generating such a record providing a seamless record of elevation change for the Antarctic Ice Sheet that spans the period 1985 to 2020.

Achieving a local understanding of fire regimes requires high-resolution, systematic and dynamic data. High-quality information can help to transform evidence into decision-making. Taking advantage of big-data and remote sensing technics we developed a flexible workflow to reconstruct burned area and fire severity data for more than 8000 individual fires in Chile. The framework developed for the database can be applied anywhere in the world with minimal adaptation.

We present wind wave parameter data from research cruises in the North Atlantic in 2020 and 2021 and the SeaVision system for measuring wind wave characteristics with a standard marine navigation X-band radar. We promote the potential of ship navigation X-band radars (when assembled with SeaVision or similar systems) for the development of a new near-global observational network, providing a much larger number of wind wave observations.

Within this paper we present the seafloor images, maps and acoustic camera data collected by a towed underwater research platform deployed in 20 locations across the eastern Weddell Sea, Antarctica, during the PS124 COSMUS expedition with the research icebreaker RV Polarstern in 2021. The 20 deployments highlight the great variability in seafloor structure and faunal communities present. Of key interest was the discovery of the largest fish nesting colony discovered globally to date.

Using more than 2.7 million Sentinel images, we proposed a global ISA mapping method and produced the 10-m global ISA dataset (GISA-10m), with overall accuracy exceeding 86 %. The inter-comparison between different global ISA datasets showed the superiority of our results. The ISA distribution at urban and rural was discussed and compared. For the first time, courtesy of the high spatial resolution, the global road ISA was further identified, and its distribution was discussed.

Accurate evapotranspiration (ET) estimation is essential to better understand Earth’s energy and water cycles. We estimate global terrestrial ET with a simple three-temperature model, without calibration and resistance parameterization requirements. Results show the ET estimates agree well with FLUXNET EC data, water balance ET, and other global ET products. The proposed daily and 0.25° ET product from 2001 to 2020 could provide large-scale information to support water-cycle-related studies.

OCTOPUS v.2 is a web-enabled database that allows users to visualise, query, and download cosmogenic radionuclide, luminescence, and radiocarbon ages and denudation rates associated with erosional landscapes, Quaternary depositional landforms, and archaeological records, along with ancillary geospatial data layers. OCTOPUS v.2 hosts five major data collections. Supporting data are comprehensive and include bibliographic, contextual, and sample-preparation- and measurement-related information.

Environmental data are critical for understanding and managing ecosystems, including the mitigation of water quality degradation. To increase data availability, we present the first large-sample water quality data set (QUADICA) of riverine macronutrient concentrations combined with water quantity, meteorological, and nutrient forcing data as well as catchment attributes. QUADICA covers 1386 German catchments to facilitate large-sample data-driven and modeling water quality assessments.

Photovoltaic (PV) power plants have been increasingly built across the world to mitigate climate change. A map of the PV power plants is important for policy management and environmental assessment. We established a map of PV power plants in China by 2020, covering a total area of 2917 km². Based on the derived map, we found that most PV power plants were situated on cropland. In addition, the installation of PV power plants has generally decreased the vegetation cover.

We generated China’s surface water bodies, Large Dams, Reservoirs, and Lakes (China-LDRL) dataset by analyzing all available Landsat imagery in 2019 (19\,338 images) in Google Earth Engine. The dataset provides accurate information on the geographical locations and sizes of surface water bodies, large dams, reservoirs, and lakes in China. The China-LDRL dataset will contribute to the understanding of water security and water resources management in China.

From 2015 to 2020, we studied the Shiyang River basin, which has the highest utilization rate of water resources and the most prominent contradiction of water use, as a typical demonstration basin to establish and improve the isotope hydrology observation system, including river source region, oasis region, reservoir channel system region, oasis farmland region, ecological engineering construction region, and salinization process region.

The management and conservation of lakes should be conducted in the context of catchments because lakes collect water and materials from their upstream catchments. This study constructed the first dataset of lake-catchment characteristics for 1525 lakes with an area from 0.2 to 4503 km² on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), which provides exciting opportunities for lake studies in a spatially explicit context and promotes the development of landscape limnology on the TP.

The Hydrology Meteorology and Complexity laboratory of École des Ponts ParisTech (https://hmco.enpc.fr) has made a data set of high-resolution atmospheric measurements (rainfall, wind, temperature, pressure, and humidity) available. It comes from a campaign carried out on a meteorological mast located on a wind farm in the framework of the Rainfall Wind Turbine or Turbulence project (RW-Turb; supported by the French National Research Agency – ANR-19-CE05-0022).

We describe the measurement and data processing of the atmospheric backscatter profile data by our CO₂ Sounder lidar from the 2017 ASCENDS/ABoVE airborne campaign. It is an additional data set from the column average CO₂ mixing ratio measurements from laser sounding. It not only helps to interpret the CO₂ mixing ratio measurement but also give a standalone data set for atmosphere backscattering study at 1572 nm wavelength.

Because urban areas are key contributors to climate change but are also susceptible to multiple hazards, one needs spatially detailed information on urban landscapes to support environmental services. This global local climate zone map describes this much-needed intra-urban heterogeneity across the whole surface of the earth in a universal language and can serve as a basic infrastructure to study e.g. environmental hazards, energy demand, and climate adaptation and mitigation solutions.