The Global Climate Observing System has specified the need to produce a quality assured set of global variables and validate a suite of satellite-derived variables that play an important role in land surface-climate interactions. Among the ~50 Essential Climate Variables (ECVs), those relevant to the land community include: land cover, fire disturbance, albedo, leaf area index, the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation, above ground biomass, snow cover, permafrost, and soil moisture. A similar concept was developed with the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), with a subset being observable by satellite such as phenology, vegetation cover and structure.

This session will provide an opportunity to present current research and findings in the areas of global land product quality assurance, product intercomparison and validation representing ECVs and EBVs, including optimal estimation approaches, in-situ data collection, sampling approaches, and standards and protocols for accuracy reporting. We strongly encourage submissions on the validation of variables covering multiple satellites, novel validation approaches based on modelling, and theoretical contributions describing quality assurance of satellite-derived terrestrial variables.