An international team of researchers has developed the world's first 30-meter resolution dataset to track changes in land productivity—a critical dataset for fighting global land degradation. Published in Scientific Data (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-04883-3), this innovation promises to help nations track progress toward Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15.3, which aims to achieve a "Land Degradation Neutrality" (LDN) world by 2030.

A research team led by Prof. SHI Chong from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with Japanese scientists, has made a breakthrough in satellite-based air quality monitoring. The team has developed AIRTrans, an innovative algorithm that dramatically improves the accuracy and efficiency of retrieving key aerosol properties from multispectral satellite observations.

A recent study published in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing sheds light on the sophisticated visual localization and topographic mapping techniques that empower China's Zhurong rover to navigate and conduct scientific investigations on Mars. Developed by researchers from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), these techniques played a vital role in the success of the Tianwen-1 mission—China's first independent interplanetary exploration endeavor.

Rapid urbanization is making Beijing's summers hotter and winters colder, according to a study published in Urban Climate. Using advanced climate modeling, researchers from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences together with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research have uncovered how urban land use and human-generated heat reshape the city's outdoor thermal comfort, posing dual challenges for residents.

A research team at the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has achieved real-time atmospheric temperature measurements at different altitudes of up to 5,200 meters using a new acoustic thermometer mounted on a tethered aerostat. Their findings were published as a cover paper in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America​.

A recent study published in the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing demonstrates how China's FengYun-3 (FY-3) meteorological satellites have significantly advanced global land surface temperature (LST) monitoring across diurnal cycles. Led by Prof. ZHAO Tianjie from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the research leverages the unique capabilities of FY-3's MicroWave Radiation Imagers (MWRI) to overcome limitations of traditional satellite-based LST retrieval methods.