Radar image of UK floods

The Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) sensor aboard Envisat captured these images in the UK on 15 and 23 July 2007. Flooded areas are visible as dark features.

The ASAR was operating in its wide-swath mode covering an area larger than 400 km with a spatial resolution of 150 m, which allows a synoptic view of large areas in all weather conditions. For more detailed analysis, images from Envisat’s narrow-swath mode (25 m spatial resolution) is used. Acquisitions of the area were obtained on 26 July 2007 and provided to the International Charter on 'Space and Major Disasters', a joint initiative for providing emergency response satellite data free of charge to those affected by disasters anywhere in the world.