'It makes me feel that we can do a lot about it': ESA official shares striking satellite snap of Europe's record-breaking summer heat waves

QUICK FACTS Where is it? Southern Europe and North Africa What's in the photo? Land and sea surface temperatures during one of Europe's record-breaking summer heat waves Which satellite took the photo? Sentinel-3B When was it taken? June 23, 2026 This striking satellite snap shows the scorching land and sea surface temperatures that hit Southern Europe during one of the continent's record-breaking heat waves this summer.

The image was created using data from the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) on board the European Space Agency's (ESA) Sentinel-3B satellite.

It was selected for this week's edition of Earth from space by Simonetta Cheli , director of Earth observation programs at ESA and head of the European Space Research Institute (ESRIN) in Frascati, Italy.

Live Science recently visited Frascati to see ESRIN's newly operational Space HPC supercomputer and sat down with Cheli for an in-depth discussion about Earth observation .

When asked about her favorite satellite image, Cheli highlighted this photo as one that caught her eye this year.

In the thermal image, dark reds highlight terrestrial temperatures in excess of 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) across most of Spain and parts of France and Italy, while dark purple spots show highs above 104 F (40 C) across patches of Spain and North Africa.

The image also reveals sea surface temperatures spiking across the Mediterranean Sea. (The colors in the image do not represent the same temperatures on land and sea.

For example, orange indicates temperatures of around 86 F (30 C) on land but around 73 F, or 23 C, at sea.) Cheli said that assessing how terrestrial and marine environments interact during extreme weather events is really important and that including both in the same image is the only way to appreciate the true scale of this heat wave: "You see the red in the sea, and you see the red on the land, and I think it gives the feeling of the heat wave that we've all been living through this summer," she said.

ESA launched the Sentinel-3C satellite in September, on board a Vega rocket that lifted off from the agency's launch site on French Guiana.

It will help the agency monitor future extreme weather events in even greater detail. (Image credit: European Commission) While many people may find such images related to human-caused climate change disheartening, Cheli sees it as a sign of hope that orbiting spacecraft can monitor otherwise-invisible changes to our planet's surface in such detail.

"It makes me feel that we can do a lot about it," she said.