From BBC
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Climate and science correspondent
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A first-of-its-kind satellite due to launch on Tuesday will be able to see through clouds and leafy canopies to assess how they are protecting the planet from climate change.
The Biomass satellite, from the European Space Agency, will “weigh” the Earth’s forests, revealing how much planet-warming carbon is being stored within trees and therefore kept out of the atmosphere.
Until now the amount of carbon stored by the 1.5 trillion trees in the planet’s rainforests has been impossible to calculate.
Led by British company Airbus, the project hopes to help scientists more accurately model climate change and track rates of deforestation.
The satellite is due to be launched at 10:15 BST from ESA’s Kourou station in French Guiana.
It has been affectionately named “space brolly” for its giant 12m diameter antenna which expands outwards.
The antenna will use radar with a very long wavelength – allowing it to see deeper inside forests and reveal branches and trunks obscured by the canopy.
“Most radars that we have in space today take wonderful images of icebergs, but when they look at forests they see the tops of the forest, the little twigs, the little leaves, they don’t penetrate down into the forests,” explained Dr Ralph Cordey, head of geosciences at Airbus.
“But what we found was that by using a much longer radar wavelength, we could see down into the depths of trees and forests,” he said.
The 1.2-tonne satellite will use an approach not dissimilar to that used in a CT scan, and analyse
