Edinburgh Castle Credit: W. Lloyd MacKenzie...
Satellite Land Surface Temperature from Envisat AA......
Global Average Surface Temperature Credit: IPCC ......
2012-02-07
GlobTemperature - User Consultation Meeting
Date and location: Edinburgh, Scotland, 27-28 June 2012
Organiser: Simon Pinnock (simon.pinnock@esa.int)
Land surface temperature (LST) is of key importance in earth system modelling and environmental monitoring. It influences fluxes of energy and water between the land and atmosphere and is itself a valuable indicator of the changing state of the land surface. Accurate knowledge of LST is essential in a range of disciplines, including numerical weather prediction and climate research, as well as for monitoring drought, wildfire risk and even threats to human health.
Satellites provide unique information unavailable from ground based temperature measurements. But accurate retrieval from satellite data is non-trivial, requiring careful attention to correct for atmospheric and surface effects as well as complex sampling, and to be effectively employed, satellite products must meet users' stringent requirements on accuracy, consistency, timeliness, format and delivery.
GlobTemperature is a new ESA initiative focussed on improving the uptake of global-scale satellite land surface temperature by the broad research and operational user communities. Conclusions and stated user requirements from this meeting will be used to define the scope and develop guidelines for a potential Data User Element (DUE) project "GlobTemperature" competitively funded by ESA (see www.esa.int/due). Activities under the GlobTemperature project could include: user driven LST product development and processing, validation, intercomparison and quality assessment, in-situ - model - satellite data merging, construction of an LST information portal, etc.
Meeting Objectives:
The aim of this first GlobTemperature User Consultation Meeting was to survey users' requirements, explore the feasibility of meeting them with available satellite data and techniques, and set a list of priority requirements to be addressed by a future GlobTemperature project.
ESA invited contributions from experts in satellite land surface temperature retrieval and modelling, and from users of land surface temperature information.
The GlobTemperature meeting will be held immediately following the University of Edinburgh's EarthTemp Network Meeting.
Agenda & Presentations:
The agenda, presentations and list of participants are available for download here.