As part of the ‘Future Climate Experience Weeks’, our Professor Hannes Taubenböck was invited to Café Wagner in Ebern – a café with a history stretching back over 140 years – to talk about our remote sensing research topics. https://www.ubiz.de/programm/kurs/Wohin-fuehrt-der-Mensch-unseren-Planeten/JU449

In an interactive lecture entitled ‘Where is humanity taking our planet?‘, he demonstrated how satellites as well as airborne sensors make the invisible visible: with their help, for example, temperatures on the land surface or trace gases in the atmosphere are measured and they reveal how our behavior is driving climate change or environmental exposure – globally as well as in Germany. He also showed how satellites make it also possible to observe from space how humankind has altered the Earth’s surface through urbanization and industrialization and how variable this is across the globe – from the housing shortage in Germany to ghost cities in China to overcrowded slums in the global south. The talk based on the fascinating satellite technology highlighted how we live today and that there is a need for our society to change. These scientific results were also discussed in relation to political and societal challenges. In a lively discussion session, the interested audience commented and discussed the societal and environmental developments made visible by Earth observation applications.