Climate Variables

Satellite-Derived climate datasets are collections of measurements and observations obtained from Earth-observing satellites that help monitor and understand the Earth’s climate system. These datasets provide long-term, consistent, and global coverage, which is essential for climate research and policy-making. These include datasets from the EOCIS project and shortly the ESA CCI project, measuring variables such as land surface temperature, sea surface temperature, aerosol and artic sea ice thickness. Observations derived from orbiting missions cover a historic temporal extent, spanning up to the present day.

The UK Earth Observation Climate Information Service (EOCIS) offers diverse datasets for climate and environmental monitoring. The project addresses 12 categories of global and regional essential climate variables, covering a broad scope of applications.

The global datasets generated by EOCIS include atmospheric, land surface, and ocean essential climate variables. Regional datasets focus on high-latitude observables, methane observations in the lower atmosphere, and soil water balance observations across Africa. These datasets are selected for their scientific significance and societal relevance, such as food security in a changing climate. Climate variables and indices for the UK are produced at high resolution (~100m), including near-real-time fire and urban flood monitoring, high-resolution surface temperature mapping, analysis of coastal water colour changes due to extreme rainfall, and environmental assessments of vegetation, lake changes, and aerosols for ecosystem and human health impact studies.

The project exploits the observations available from environmental sensors orbiting in space to create climate data records and climate information. EOCIS is a collaboration led by the National Centre for Earth Observation, and involving over a dozen research organisations.

For more information on the project and datasets, please visit the EOCIS website, or discover EOCIS within the data catalogue.

The European Space Agency (ESA)'s Climate Change Initiative (CCI) programme kicked off in 2010. The programme goal is to provide stable, long-term, satellite-based Essential Climate Variable (ECV) data products for climate modellers and researchers. The ECVs will be derived from multiple satellite data sets (not just ESA but all sources via international collaboration) and include specific information on the errors and uncertainties of the data set. Comprehensive information will also be provided on calibration and validation, long term algorithm maintenance, data curation and reprocessing.

The Climate Change Initiative brings together European expertise covering the full range of scientific, technical and development specialisations available within the European Earth Observation community, and will establish lasting and transparent access for global climate scientific and operational communities to its results.