Technology from Goonhilly Earth Station could soon be used to predict environmental threats such as flooding and wildfires, monitor coastal erosion and support farmers by tracking the impact of climate change on crop growth.

A team from the University of Hertfordshire is using satellite radar to create detailed images of the surface of the UK, which are free from cloud cover for the first time, because radar can pass through clouds.

Astrophysicist Professor James Geach and his PhD student Mike Smith have been using Goonhilly's supercomputer to train their 'Clear Sky' algorithm on tens of thousands of images of the UK taken by European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites.

Every image pixel represents a 10x10 metre square of the UK.

The team is already working with agritech company Agrimetrics on a programme for monitoring the health and growth rate of each of the UK’s 2.8 million fields on a weekly basis.

Future customers could include insurance firms, commodity traders, supermarkets and the agricultural industry.

They will be able to accelerate their decision making - for example, predicting in advance when a river will burst its banks - and take appropriate pre-emptive action.