Climate Change Initiative projects

ESA has added nine new projects to its flagship climate initiative as part of ongoing efforts to systematically observe and collect data in support of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The three-year projects join the ESA Climate Change Initiative, a research programme focused on generating global datasets for the key components of Earth’s climate – known as essential climate variables or ECVs. Six of the new projects focus on land-based climate variables including land surface temperature, high-resolution land cover, above-ground biomass, lakes, snow cover and permafrost. Two projects focus on the ocean and will assess sea state and ocean salinity, the latter playing an important role in regulating ocean-circulation patterns. Water vapour – the planet’s most abundant greenhouse gas – is the sole new atmospheric variable to be studied.