May 2026
- The Geodesy group hosts a webinar as a part of “NMGS AKURE CHAPTER TECHNICAL SERIES (NACTS)”, Date: Wednesday, May 20, 2026, Time: 12:00 -14:00 Noon West African Time :: 13;00-15:00 CET
- Speakers: Ehsan Forootan (AAU), Alexandra Murray (DHI), Shima Azimi (AAU), and Manu K. Soman (AAU).
- This webinar presents the current status and development plans of the SFAS project, supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF) through the DFF1-Green thematic research project entitled “Space-based Free Flood Awareness System for Africa (SFAS),” Grant No. 10.46540/4307-00146B.
- Our Geodesy Research Aalborg University group will present various studies related to hydrological data assimilation and satellite-based Earth Observation at EGU2026 in Vienna, May 3-8, 3026. Feel free to attend the presentations and reach out to our researchers.
- EGU26-6685 | Orals | HS2.5.3
Model reveals human water use impact on shifts of terrestrial water storage patterns
Maike Schumacher, Çağatay Çakan, Stine Gjørup Klemmensen, Emmanuel Nyenah, Petra Döll, and Ehsan Forootan
Wed, 06 May, 17:40–17:50 (CEST)
Room B - EGU26-6682 | ECS | Orals | HS2.5.1
Advancing Large-Scale Water Cycle Understanding in the Danube River Basin by GRACE/-FO Data Assimilation
Çağatay Çakan, Ehsan Forootan, Emmanuel Nyenah, Petra Dӧll, and Maike Schumacher
Thu, 07 May, 09:25–09:35 (CEST)
Room 3.29/30 - GU26-17836 | ECS | Posters on site | G4.2
GravityPython: An Open-Source Pipeline for Inversion, Analysis, Assimilation, and Earth System Applications
Fan Yang, Shuhao Liu, Yi Wu, Weihang Zhang, Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte, Maike Schumacher, and Ehsan Forootan
Thu, 07 May, 10:45–12:30 (CEST)
Hall X2 | X2.17 - EGU26-19207 | ECS | Orals | HS2.2.6
Assimilation of SSM into hydrological models: comparing assimilation in higher spatial resolution (1km, few-daily) vs. higher temporal resolution (25km, daily)
Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte, Francesco Leopardi, Jaime Gaona, Luca Brocca, Paolo Filippucci, Stefania Camici, Henrik Madsen, and Ehsan Forootan
Thu, 07 May, 16:50–17:00 (CEST)
Room C - EGU26-20543 | ECS | Orals | HS2.4.11
The Impact of Model Parameter Calibration on Future Extreme Event Predictions in the Ganges Basin
Supriya Tiwari, Ehsan Forootan, and Maike Schumacher
Fri, 08 May, 09:15–09:25 (CEST)
Room 2.15 - EGU26-5752 | ECS | Orals | HS6.5
Satellite-Enhanced Flood Modelling for the Niger River Basin using a Synergy of Hydrological Modelling and Earth Observation Data
Shima Azimi, Alexandra Murray, Connor Chewning, Cecile Kittel, Henrik Madsen, Fan Yang, Maike Schumacher, and Ehsan Forootan
Fri, 08 May, 14:40–14:50 (CEST)
Room B - We acknowledge the support of Independent Research Fund Denmark and Villum Fonden for supporting our research activities through DFF2 DANSk-LSM, DFF1 Thematic Green SFAF, and Villum YI: A Novel Synergy of Physics-based and Data-driven Methods for Reliable Hydrological Predictions under Changing Climate
- EGU26-6685 | Orals | HS2.5.3
- The Geodesy group hosts a webinar as a part of “NMGS AKURE CHAPTER TECHNICAL SERIES (NACTS)”, Date: Wednesday, May 20, 2026, Time: 12:00 -14:00 Noon West African Time :: 13;00-15:00 CET
April 2026
- Çağatay Çakan presented his study, Advancing Hydrological Data Assimilation Frameworks with Machine Learning, as a poster in the 5th ECMWF-ESA Machine Learning Workshop, 13-17 April 2026.
March 2026
- Çağatay Çakan attended two training courses at European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
- 16-20 March: Data Assimilation and Machine Learning
- 23-27 March: EUMETSAT/ECMWF NWP-SAF Satellite Data Assimilation
- Çağatay Çakan attended two training courses at European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
October 2025
- Çağatay Çakan presented his study, Physics-based and data-driven strategies to combine satellite observations with large-scale hydrological models, as a poster in the Space Conference 2025, 20-21 October.
June 2025
- Ehsan Forootan presents the recent outputs of the ESA projects during the Living Planet Symposium 2025 (LPS25), Vienna, 23—27 JUNE 2025.
- From the ESA SING (Studying the Impact of the NGGM and MAGIC missions) project:
- Exploring the impact of the temporal resolution of satellite gravity products on hydrological Data Assimilation (DA)
- Date: June 23 | Session: A.10.03 – POSTER – Our solid Earth: from core to surface
- An efficient data assimilation (DA) approach for integrating GRACE-C, NGGM, and MAGIC data into global high resolution hydrological models
- Date: June 25 | Session: C.02.05 – POSTER – MAGIC – Preparing for the ESA-NASA satellite gravity constellation
- Exploring the impact of the temporal resolution of satellite gravity products on hydrological Data Assimilation (DA)
- From the ESA DTE Hydrology Next (Digital Twin Earth Hydrology Next) project:
- Exploring GRACE and GRACE-FO data to estimate the groundwater component of a digital twin of the terrestrial water cycle
- Date: June 26 | Session: A.07.02 – POSTER – Quantification of Water Resources and Their Evolution Under Anthropogenic Pressure
- Exploring GRACE and GRACE-FO data to estimate the groundwater component of a digital twin of the terrestrial water cycle
- The presentations are developed in collaborations with: Fan Yang, Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte, Maike Schumacher, Nooshin Mehrnegar from AAU Geodesy, Luca Brocca (IRPI), Marius Schlaak (TUM), and Roland Pail (TUM)
- From the ESA SING (Studying the Impact of the NGGM and MAGIC missions) project:
- Ehsan Forootan presents the recent outputs of the ESA projects during the Living Planet Symposium 2025 (LPS25), Vienna, 23—27 JUNE 2025.
May 2025
- The deadline of application is reached for the SATELLITE-BASED HYDROLOGICAL DATA ASSIMILATION, August 26-28. 2025, Aalborg. We received an overwhelming response with 93 applications. Due to space limitations, we have selected 35 (external) participants, prioritising early career scientists and those with relevant research interests.
- The Geodesy group contributed to the European Geosciences Union (EGU) 2025 in Vienna with 5 oral and 1 PICO presentations.
- Orals:
- Improving Hydrological Process Representation in the Ganges River Basin Using a Data-Assimilation Approach
- By: Supriya Tiwari , Ehsan Forootan, Bhaskar R. Nikam, and Maike Schumacher
- Terrestrial Water Storage Data Assimilation into large-scale hydrological models: a new sequential filter to mitigate errors of ensemble-based disaggregation schemes
- By: Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte, Maike Schumacher, Fan Yang, Henrik Madsen, and Ehsan Forootan
- The impacts of climatic variations and human water use on global and regional terrestrial water storage changes
- By: Stine Gjørup Klemmensen, Ehsan Forootan, Emmanuel Nyenah, Petra Döll, and Maike Schumacher
- Global Assessment of Drought Recovery Time from Gridded Precipitation Datasets and GRACE/GRACE-FO Terrestrial Water Storage Anomalies
- By: Çağatay Çakan, M. Tuğrul Yılmaz, Henryk Dobslaw, E. Sinem Ince, Fatih Evrendilek, Christoph Förste, and Ali L. Yağcı
- Satellite-based quantification of natural and human-induced water storage changes in the Murray-Darling River Basin, Australia
- By: Maike Schumacher, Albert. I.J.M. van Dijk, Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte, Fan Yang, and Ehsan Forootan
- Improving Hydrological Process Representation in the Ganges River Basin Using a Data-Assimilation Approach
- PICO:
- How Can a Hierarchical Bayesian Approach Bridge the Gap Between Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data and Hydrological Models?
- By: Nooshin Mehrnegar and Ehsan Forootan
- How Can a Hierarchical Bayesian Approach Bridge the Gap Between Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data and Hydrological Models?
- Orals:
February 2025
- February 13-14th, Ehsan Forootan attends MAG meeting of the NGGM mission at the European Space Agency (ESA) ESTEC , The Netherlands
- February 25th, Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte received the Elite Forsk Travel Award
November 2024
- November 25-27th, Ehsan Forootan presented AAU’s Data assimilation at the European Space Agency (ESA) ESRIN, Italy
- December 15th, Geodesy group’s Christmas Party
- January 30th, Ehsan Forootan met experts from the Danish Meteorological Institute at the Science Match 2025
October 2024
- October 2nd, Maike Schumacher presented her research funded by Villum Fonden to a wider audience on DR.dk
- October 9th, Ehsan Forootan attends the first meeting of the ESA and NASA joint meeting on the MAGIC mission.
- October 14th – 18th, Maike Schumacher visits Cardiff University and University of Bristol to discuss the progress of the Down2Earth research project.
September 2024
- September 18th, Ehsan Forootan attends the Kick Off meeting of the ESA project SING.
August 2024
- On August 22rd 2024, we had a very productive Geodesy, Remote Sensing and Data Assimilation seminar at the Department of Sustainability and Planning, Aalborg University. We also used the opportunity to welcome Maike Schumacher’s new PhD student Supriya Tiwari on the Villum Young Investigator project supported by the Villum Fonden and listened to her previous research about the assimilation of remotely sensed soil moisture and snow cover data into the VIC model. We also said goodbye to A/Prof Shaoxing Mo, a hydrological deep learning expert, who visited Geodesy Research Aalborg University last seven months and left to continue his research at the Research Center Jülich. We also heard about the updates of the DANSk-LSM project, supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark, where Fan Yang and Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte talked about AAU’s global and multi sensor hydrological Data Assimilation system. Nooshin Mehrnegar presented her outputs of the MuSe-BDA project supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and Mehdi Shafiei Joud reported SAR processing status. Special thanks to Peter Cederholm for presenting our BSc and MSc study and for asking relevant questions, as well as Marie Dam and Hilda Vörös for supporting our research and helpful participation.
- August 23rd, Ehsan Forootan chaired Ms Imke Sievers’s PhD defense “Combining CryoSat-2 Data with Ocean-Sea-Ice Models to Improve the Understanding of Arctic Sea Ice Thickness” in Copenhagen.
July 2024
- July the 3rd and 4th Ehsan Forootan attends the ESA’s Next Generation Gravity Mission meeting
April 2024
- Researchers from Geodesy Group are attending the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2024 in Vienna, Austria, 14–19 April 2024. We present research of our projects DANSk-LSM and Down2Earth:
- Benefits and challenges of daily GRACE(-FO) satellite Data Assimilation (DA) for predicting fast-evolving hydrological processes. Presented by: Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte, Maike Schumacher and Ehsan Forootan
- The AAU Calibration and Data Assimilation (CDA) approach for improving large-scale hydrological models in a changing climate. Presented by: Maike Schumacher, Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte, Fan Yang and Ehsan Forootan
- Sequential calibration and data assimilation for predicting atmospheric variability. Presented by: Ehsan Forootan, Saeed Farzaneh, Masoud Dehvari, Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte and Maike Schumacher
- Ehsan Forootan and Maike Schumacher are planning a PICO session for EGU 2024.
- The PICO session is called: G2.7 Joint session on geoscience applications of mass-market GNSS sensors and ionosphere monitoring and modelling | PICO
- Convener: Balaji Devaraju | Co-conveners: Tobias Kersten, Franziska Koch, Jens-Andre Paffenholz, Ehsan Forootan, Claudia Borries, Maike Schumacher
- Maike Schumacher is planning a PICO session for EGU 2024.
- The PICO session is called: HS2.5.3: Recent advancement in estimating global, continental and regional scale water balance components | PICO
- Convener: Hannes Müller Schmied | Co-conveners: Maike Schumacher, Rohini Kumar, Robert Reinecke
- April the 3rd and 4th Ehsan Forootan attends the ESA’s Next Generation Gravity Mission meeting
- Researchers from Geodesy Group are attending the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2024 in Vienna, Austria, 14–19 April 2024. We present research of our projects DANSk-LSM and Down2Earth:
February 2024
- Michael Singer (Deputy Director of the Water Research Institute and Professor in the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Cardiff University) and Katerina Michaelides (Professor of Dryland Hydrology at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol) visited the AAU Geodesy research group on 13.02.2024. A seminar was organised to provide a platform for scientific discussions about on-going research at AAU and within the EU H2020 Down2Earth project with presentations by Ehsan Forootan, Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte, Fan Yang, Shaoxing Mo, Micheal Singer, Katerina Michaelides and Maike Schumacher. The meeting was closed with a joint dinner.
January 2024
- Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte had her 11-month PhD seminar on January the 10th. The title for the PhD seminar was: PhD Study – Plan Addressing Challenges of Multi-Sensor Data Assimilation in Large Scale Hydrological Models
- January the 17th and 18th Ehsan Forootan attends the ESA’s Next Generation Gravity Mission Science team meeting in ESA ESTEC, the Netherlands.
- January the 18th and 19th Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte, Fan Yang and Maike Schumacher attends the GRACE/-FO data assimilation workshop: Technical workshop on assimilating GRACE/-FO data into land surface and hydrological models
November 2023
- Ehsan Forootan and Maike Schumacher are planning a PICO session for EGU 2024.
- The PICO session is called: G5.1 Ionosphere, thermosphere and space weather: monitoring and modelling | PICO
- Convener: Ehsan Forootan
- Co-conveners: Claudia Borries (DLR Germany), Guenther March (ESA, Netherlands), Maike Schumacher (AAU)
- The latest Report of GGOS Days 2023 are out
- Ehsan Forootan has contributed in the focus area Geodetic Space Weather Research
- Ehsan Forootan and Maike Schumacher are planning a PICO session for EGU 2024.
September 2023
- Ehsan Forootan has joined the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Science Panel of the Next-Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM)
- Ehsan Forootan will act as the Science Panel of the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) as a part of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) to represent the Focus Area Geodetic Space Weather.
- Dr Thomas Jagdhuber and MS Anke Fluhrer from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), and Dr Cecile Marie Margaretha Kittel from the Danish Hydrological Institute (DHI) have visited the Geodesy group to discuss the progress of the DANSk-LSM research project.
July 2023
- Ehsan Forootan will act as a convener at IUGG 2023 in Berlin from July 12th to 20th, JG03 Remote Sensing and Modelling of the Atmosphere (IAG, IAGA, IAMAS, IAVCEI)
- On July 6th, 2023, Ehsan Forootan presented the final report of the Swarm DISC project entitled:
June 2023
- Ehsan Forootan will attend the IUGG 2023 in Berlin which takes place from July 11th to 20th
- See the details of JG03 Remote Sensing and Modelling of the Atmosphere (IAG, IAGA, IAMAS, IAVCEI) at iugg2023berlin.org
- Conveners: Michael Schmidt (Germany, IAG), Ehsan Forootan (Denmark, IAG), Loren Chang (Taiwan, China, IAGA), Claudia Stubenrauch (France, IAMAS) and Fabio Dioguardi (Italy, IAVCEI)
- Ehsan Forootan will attend the IUGG 2023 in Berlin which takes place from July 11th to 20th
April 2023
- Ehsan Forootan was the convener of the pico session G5.1 at the EGU conference 2023. The session is about:
- He also presented the recent research development about:
December 2022
Nooshin Mehrnegar presents her recent research outcomes at the AGU Fall Meeting 2022
November 2022
Ehsan Forootan attends the GGOS (Global Geodetic Observing System) day to represent the Focus Area “Geodetic Space Weather Research”
October 2022
Thomas Papanikolaou attends the GRACE and GRACE-FO Science team meeting in Germany
September 2022
Ehsan Forootan is involved in organizing the 2nd (IAG) – Commission 4 Symposium of the International Association of Geodesy