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Unlocking Antarctica: Building an open access, accessible satellite data platform

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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Satellite data over Antarctica provides a vast resource spanning decades for observing critical changes in the cryosphere, ecosystems and oceans. However, our ability to observe Antarctica systematically at a continental scale is constrained by difficulties accessing, storing and pre-processing satellite imagery prior to analysis. Factors such as cloud masking, reflectivity, prolonged periods of darkness, changes in atmospheric water vapour, aerosols and signal scattering mean that corrections applied to satellite data in other regions and in existing global products aren’t fully applicable to Antarctic conditions. To overcome these challenges, Geoscience Australia is developing Digital Earth Antarctica. This platform will improve access to corrected continental scale satellite data through use of Open Data Cube technology, providing open access to analysis ready time-series data that has been corrected and validated for Antarctic conditions. Optical data will initially include Landsat and Sentinel-2 collections, while Sentinel-1 will be pre-processed for access to synthetic aperture radar backscatter and interferometric data. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data over Antarctica overcomes the challenges of sustained observing during periods of cloudiness and darkness, and in Interferometric Wide swath mode can be used to detect changes in surface topography over time (InSAR). This presentation will provide an overview of Digital Earth Antarctica’s planned processing pipelines to produce analysis ready optical and SAR data and the wealth of opportunities that will be unlocked to observe, monitor and understand Antarctic systems. Presented at the 2024 Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) Open Science Conference, Chile

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Unlocking Antarctica: Building an open access, accessible satellite data platform
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/en/dataset/60d3b3c4-8d89-4beb-96a2-e0540ad27c4f
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 08/04/2019
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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    ]
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  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Unlocking Antarctica: Building an open access, accessible satellite data platform". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/unlocking-antarctica-building-an-open-access-accessible-satellite-data-platform