07 August 2020On August 4, 2020, a heavy explosion in Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon, killed over a hundred people and left many hundred thousand homeless. The explosion took place in the harbor area at 18:08 local time. It was probably caused by a large quantity of ammonium nitrate stored at a warehouse in the port.
30 July 2020A fact-finding visit led Bundestag members Karsten Klein (FDP) and Dr. Lukas Köhler (FDP) to the EOC in Oberpfaffenhofen on 29 July 2020. The FDP politicians were particularly interested in applications in the field of environment and climate. In the Earth Observation Center, the delegates then discussed the possible applications of earth observation. The focus was on the Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information (ZKI).
27 July 2020On 24 July 2020, Federal Minister of Economics and Energy, Peter Altmaier and Member of the Bundestag and Chairman of the CSU Regional Group in the German Bundestag, Alexander Dobrindt visited Germany's highest research station: the Schneefernerhaus (UFS) on the Zugspitze. Thanks to its high alpine location, the environmental research station offers unique opportunities for environmental, climate and altitude research. The German Aerospace Center (DLR), as one of a total of ten consortium partners, conducts research there, among other things, on atmospheric temperature at high altitude and analyses changes that contribute to the improvement of climate models and the early detection of natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes or tsunamis.
17 July 2020Within the framework of the International Charter 'Space and Major Disasters', DLR-ZKI has been activated seven times in the past two weeks, six of the activations being due to heavy rainfall with subsequent flooding and landslides in Asia (Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Japan, and Myanmar).
07 July 2020After sunset these past few days we were offered a spectacle quite unusual at our latitudes. Although the sun had already retreated below the horizon, silvery cloud structures became visible, so-called “noctilucent clouds”. Noctilucent clouds are not conventional clouds and thus of considerable interest to scientists. They are visible ambassadors of the climate change that is under way. .