Webcast

Climate SAF

Concerns about the Earth’s climate have increased the need not only for international control of greenhouse gases but also for climate monitoring on a global scale. Only space-based observations can deliver this type of global data and the CM SAF uses these data to provide the European contribution towards climate research. CM SAF aims at the provision of satellite-derived geophysical parameter data sets suitable for climate monitoring. CM SAF provides climatologies for Essential Climate Variables (ECV), as required by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) implementation plan in support of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Developed under the leadership of Deutscher Wetterdienst, the German Meteorological Service, in partnership with the Finnish, Belgian, Dutch, Swedish and Swiss National Meteorological Services, the CM SAF entered its Continuous Development and Operations Phase in 2007 after an initial operations phase had started in 2004.

The CM SAF data products are categorized in monitoring data sets obtained in near real time and data sets based on carefully intersensor calibrated radiances. The homogenous sets of high-quality data help scientists to investigate climate variability and long-term changes in the climate mean state. The products are derived from several instruments on-board meteorological operational satellites in geostationary and polar orbit as the Meteosat and EUMETSAT Polar System satellites, respectively. The data are archived and made accessible for study via this web site. Two important aspects of the long-term studies facilitated by the CM SAF will be the monitoring and assessing of natural versus man-made climate changes and observations of climate changes in different scales of time and space.

The CM SAF’s expanding suite of products is tailored for applications focusing on key aspects of the Earth’s atmospheric water and energy cycles and includes cloud parameters, radiation budget parameters (surface and top of the atmosphere) as well as temperature and humidity (water vapour) in the atmosphere.

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Filed under Keywords:

Climate, HOAPS, ToA, Surface Radiation, Cloud Product