An overview of collaborative field campaigns, calval and community science activities enabled through the ESA-NASA Joint Program Planning Group

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) created a Joint Program Planning Group (JPPG) in 2010 to enhance coordination between NASA and ESA on current and future space Earth Observation missions. One of the three sub-groups of the JPPG is dedicated to collaboration in field measurement campaigns, mission and product calval and more recent collaborative EO community science projects.

Since 2010 the JPPG has initiated or informed numerous airborne field campaigns to help develop and document the scientific objectives, develop geophysical retrieval algorithms and provide calibration and/or validation for present and/or future satellites to be operated by NASA, ESA, and its partners. The activities address an underlying need to demonstrate unambiguously that space-based measurements, which are typically based on engineering measurements by the detectors (e.g. photons), are sensitive to and can be used to reliably retrieve the geophysical and/or biogeochemical parameters of interest across the Earth and validate mission design. Such campaigns have included as diverse subjects as atmospheric trace gas composition over the western US, solar induced fluorescence over the Eastern United States, wind profiles over the north Atlantic, vegetation canopy profiles in Gabon, and sea ice and ice sheet properties in the Arctic and Antarctic. The collaborative field campaign and calval activities have helped use of surface-based, airborne, and/or space-based observations to develop precursor data sets and support both pre- and post- launch calibration/validation and retrieval algorithm development for space-based satellite missions measuring our Earth system.

The generation of consistent, inclusive, community-based assessments of Earth system change through integrated analyses of these different data sets is also a critically important process in the challenge of documenting Earth system change. To assist in this process the JPPG has supported collaborative community efforts including three installments of the Ice Mass Balance Intercomparison Experiment (IMBIE; two completed, one ongoing), the NASA-ESA Snow on Sea Ice Intercomparison (NESOSI), and the Arctic Methane and Permafrost Challenge (AMPAC).

In this talk a review of JPPG activities and their results, as well current plans for future collaborations including campaigns will be provided.