Launching a balloon over Lapland

Researchers from the Finnish Meteorological Institute’s Arctic Space Centre launched a big white balloon from Lapland to measure the amount of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere as part of ESA’s preparatory work for the new Copernicus Carbon Dioxide Monitoring satellite mission. The aim is to evaluate the feasibility of measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane over snow. Contrary to our everyday experience, snow is very dark at the wavelengths that greenhouse-gas measuring satellites observe.

Read full story: Snowy Lapland and the white balloon