Climate Monitoring SAF: Sustained Generation of Satellite-Based Climate Data Records

In recent decades climate variability and change have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents. Observations are needed to understand and document these impacts and its causes. Such observations are increasingly based on remote sensing from satellites which offer global scale and continuous coverage. Only long-term and consistent observations of the Earth system allow us to quantify climate variability and change and their impacts on the natural and human dimension.

Since more than 20 years, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (CM SAF, https://www.cmsaf.eu) develops capabilities for a sustained generation and provision of Climate Data Records (CDRs) derived from primarily operational meteorological satellites. The product portfolio of the CM SAF comprises long time series of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) related to the energy and water cycles as defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Currently available CM SAF CDRs include, among others, surface and top of the atmosphere radiative fluxes, cloud products, surface albedo as well as latent heat flux/evaporation, precipitation and freshwater flux over the global ice-free oceans. The recent CDR versions cover the WMO reference period from 1991-2020, and several of the CM SAF CDRs even have a temporal coverage of more than 40 years. In order to serve applications with strong timeliness requirements, CM SAF also produces so-called Interim Climate Data Records (ICDRs), which are typically released within a few days of the observations. All products are well-documented, carefully validated and have been externally reviewed prior to product release.

After a short introduction to CM SAF and an overview of available and upcoming CDRs and ICDRs from CM SAF, the presentation will focus on new releases of CDRs and ICDRs of clouds and radiation. The product portfolio was enhanced to also include the surface radiation budget and recent retrieval developments rely on artificial intelligence techniques. Examples from validation and applications using CM SAF data records will also be introduced.