Snow cover is a vital source of water for industry, agriculture and human consumption. Records show that last winter’s snow cover in the Alps was less than it has been since 2001. This Copernicus Sentinel-3 image captured on 18 December 2022 shows the wide-coverage of snowfall which hopefully bodes well for the coming year.

Carrying a suite of cutting-edge instruments, the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission measures Earth’s oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics.

Sentinel-3 measures the temperature, colour and height of the sea surface as well as the thickness of sea ice, while over land it provides indices of vegetation state, maps land and measures the height of rivers and lakes.