Space/GMES and Climate Change

Mikko Strahlendorff, GMES Bureau

GMES Overall View

What is their need?

Oil Spill TrackingFarming Flood

Land Marine Atmosphere Emergency

Policy Makers Public&

USERS

OBSERVATION

Space Infrastructure

In Situ Infrastructure&

Air Quality

Private, Commercial&

Sustainable observation

Surveillance

Security

Arctic change

Examples ofServices Provided

InformationServices

Climate

GMES Components

GMES is an EU led initiative

In-situ component – coordinated by EEA 

• Observations mostly within national responsibility• with coordination at European level • air, sea- and ground-based systems and instruments

 Space Component – coordinated by ESA

• Sentinels - EO missions developed specifically for GMES:• Contributing Missions - EO missions built for purposes other than • GMES but offering part of their capacity to GMES

(EU/ESA MSs, EUMETSAT, commercial, international)  Service Component – coordinated by EC

• Earth System services - Land, Atmosphere, Marine• Crosscutting services - Emergency response, Security, Climate

Change

Sea Level Change 1970-2010

GMES soon EU programme

Commission Proposal for a RegulationEuropean earth observation Programme GMES

and its initial operations (2011-2013) adopted on 20 May 2009 - codecision in high gear

• Main objectives European earth observation programme

scope, organisational arrangements, data policy, infrastructure

6 thematic areas: land, ocean, atmosphere, emergency, security & climate change

Rules for initial operationspropose supplementary funding

Council requests on CC

• Space Council September 2008 Recognised space & CC as key priority Asked for study on needs for full access to

standardised data/for increased computing power

Called on EC to define how GMES services and European space observation archives can contribute most effectively to the provision of data

• Competitiveness Council December 2008 invited EC to foster the implementation of the

GMES climate change monitoring to support the EU policies

EC response

• JRC hosted a workshop incl. EC, space agencies, meteorological and research org.

• As a result a study report has been drafted summarising the workshop findings Need for standardised data confirmed Need for more distributed computing and

networking confirmed Absolute need for operational funding for global re-

analysis No need for central CC research Institute.

• Outcome justifies moving forward on the political front, especially with announced EC priorities for the years to come: ”need to provide necessary data basis for our policies, especially adaptation”

• GCOS has made global plan for UNFCCC and GEO • EUMETSAT operational activities with own satellites;

climate requirements in future programmes & produce climate data records from archives (SAFs)

• ESA building Sentinels for GMES as operational fleet from 2012 onwards and has many research missions 6-year Climate Change Initiative

• ECMWF has global atmospheric reanalysis modelling

• GMES reanalysis of ECVs in service precursors (MyOcean,MACC) & 3 climate projects in call 2009

• FP7 Environment: research projects on Climate scenarios, Adaptation costs, Regional CC impacts etc.

Situation today

Way forward: Space obs

• Europe needs a long-term collection from space to assess climate variables

• Continue with ESA and EUMETSAT actions• Add GMES Sentinels as new continuous

component• Archive all to enable reprocessing & finding

new information in old records • Complement Space with globally distributed in-

situ to maximise information quality and coverage

Way forward: Exploit space-derived climate data

• Europe needs operational assimilation, processing and reanalysis of satellite-derived data for long-term, continuous and consistent climate information

• ECMWF has capacity for global reanalysis• Until now only time-limited research funding• Need to establish sustained operational

services• All ECVs need to be assessed under resource

constrains

RTDENV/CC

Service process scheme

ESA CCI or EUM SAFs

GMES

LandMCS

MarineCS

GAtmosCST

CD

R=

NR

T E

CV

products

GCC service

Coupled (L,M,A)

Global / EUReAnalysis

+Impact models

Delayed consistent E

CV

tim

e series and impact stats

Users: Socio

economic Models;

Environm. Assessment; Downstream

services; Policy

Makers; Scientists

ES

A / E

UM

ET

SA

Tsatellite data processing

Fundam

ental Clim

ate DR

CC models• initialisation• prediction

Conclusions

• use current GMES resources to start for sustaining the most crucial climate services

• coordinate with all relevant European actors the information processing activities: from “observations” up to “inputs to decision-makers” with coherence between actors including organising reanalysis and climate scenario production

• prioritise observation requirements for climate monitoring in designing future observation systems;

• develop with European actors a proactive strategy with international partners to jointly meet the challenge of providing the best global knowledge base on climate using existing frameworks