As a member of the European Space Agency, ESA, the Norwegian Space Centre started potential participant activities in the ENVISAT-programme in 1991. On behalf of Norway the ENVISAT declaration was signed in 1992. The Norwegian Space Centre has worked with the ENVISAT programme for more than ten years, and Norway has through the Norwegian Space Centre paid approx. 200 MNOK for the participation in the ENVISAT programme since the start.

Space-based maritime monitoring and surveillance has been a focus area for the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) for over a decade. Throughout the ERS and RADARSAT-1 era, FFI has performed applied research that helped establish today’s operational services for radar satellite-based oil spill and fisheries monitoring in Norway.

Microwaves, not sensitive to cloud cover or sun illumination, are important for remote sensing at Nordic latitudes. The Arctic ice cover and the boreal forests are extensive areas important for the living conditions and sensitive to climate changes at these latitudes. ENVISAT offers new possibilities to detect and follow possible changes e.g. due to the greenhouse effect.

Ocean wind and wave measurements from satellites combined with numeral global wave and atmospheric models are dramatically changing our way of obtaining ocean wave information both for operational and climatological purposes.

The marine remote sensing group at Stockholm University is part of the MERIS-ATSR validation and calibration team (MAVT). The objective is to deliver sea-truthing data for the cal/val activities for MERIS derived from an optical station in the open Baltic Sea.

GOMOS will measure ozone and trace gases in the atmosphere by detecting the absorption of starlight in UV, visible and infrared wavelengths.

DNMI, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, participate in a larger EU-funded project, EnviWave. The overall aim of the projects is to improve the usefulness of ocean wave information derived from Envisat ASAR, Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar, and RA-2, Radar Altimeter, within applied oceanography, ocean climatology, and meteorology.

Its suite of ten Earth observation sensors will allow the scientific community to simultaneously map the land, oceans and atmosphere of our planet with instrumentation covering a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum and mapping technologies.

Proper management of natural resources in developing countries requires that information on the state and changes in a range of biopsyical parameters is available. In the drylands of Africa, management of scarce water and vegetation resources is of key importance.

The Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) participate in the geophysical validation of the products from one of the ENVISAT sensors. NIVA contributes in the validation of the MERIS sensor (Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) and takes part in the MERIS and AATSR Validation Team.