The Meteosat Third Generation satellite, advantages for an enhancement of evapotranspiration and surface energy fluxes estimates in the LSA SAF Programme

The Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis Programme (LSA SAF, http://lsa-saf.eumetsat.int/) has developed an operational service that delivers satellite-based information on the land’s surface. The portfolio of the LSA SAF comprises estimates of evapotranspiration (ET) and surface energy fluxes (SEF) on the basis of observations by the geostationary Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite. Those estimates are generated every 30 minutes across Europe, Africa and Eastern South America at the spatial resolution of the SEVIRI instrument of MSG. The time step and timeliness of these products are seldom found in operational and ET/SEF products in spite of the relevance of accounting for the variability in energy exchange between land surface and atmosphere in the course of the day.

The operational character of the LSA SAF programme has ensured the generation of a nearly 20 years-long archive of ET and SEF estimates (Barrios et al., 2024). The archive keeps growing as the ET/SEF estimates are generated in near-real time. The near real time operational data is freely available through the LSA SAF internet portal (https://landsaf2.ipma.pt/geonetwork/).

The recent launch of the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) satellite will bring improvements in the spatial detail of the ET/SEF products of the LSA SAF programme while remaining compatible with the existing archive. The imager onboard MSG (SEVIRI) delivers observations at ~3 km spatial resolution at sub-satellite position whereas the spatial detail derived from Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) onboard the MTG exhibits a spatial resolution of 1-2 km. 

This contribution will discuss the expected advances  in the LSA SAF ET/SEF products as a consequence of the operational ingestion of MTG-based observations in the forcing of the LSA SAF algorithm. Other synergies with spatial missions to further improve ET/SEF estimates will be discussed as well.

Reference:

Barrios, J. M., Arboleda, A., Dutra, E., Trigo, I., Gellens-Meulenberghs, F. 2024: Evapotranspiration and surface energy fluxes across Europe, Africa and Eastern South America throughout the operational life of the Meteosat second generation satellite. Geoscience Data Journal (accepted).