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Satellite based climate data records play an increasing role in climate monitoring and help to answer climate related questions. Nowadays satellite based climate data records cover a time period of several decades. EUMETSAT and it’s Satellite Application Facilities (SAF) provide a number of high quality climate data records for various geophysical variables, such as solar radiation, land surface temperature, cloud fractional cover, soil moisture, and many more, derived from both, geostationary and polar orbiting satellites.

These climate data records are free and open to everyone. They continue to be reprocessed to account for improvements of the algorithm and to include recent time periods. In addition to the data, free software tools, such as the CM SAF R Toolbox, are developed and provided by the SAF’s for users to work with the data.

This short course is an opportunity to get an overview about the climate data records available from the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facilities, learn how to access them and gain some first experiences in how to work with the software tools provided.