Operational climate monitoring from space: the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (CM-SAF)

摘要

The Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (CM-SAF) aims at theprovision of satellite-derived geophysical parameter data sets suitable forclimate monitoring. CM-SAF provides climatologies for Essential ClimateVariables (ECV), as required by the Global Climate Observing Systemimplementation plan in support of the UNFCCC. Several cloud parameters,surface albedo, radiation fluxes at the top of the atmosphere and at thesurface as well as atmospheric temperature and humidity products form a soundbasis for climate monitoring of the atmosphere. The products are categorizedin monitoring data sets obtained in near real time and data sets based oncarefully intercalibrated radiances. The CM-SAF products are derived fromseveral instruments on-board operational satellites in geostationary andpolar orbit as the Meteosat and NOAA satellites, respectively. The existingdata sets will be continued using data from the instruments on-board the newjoint NOAA/EUMETSAT Meteorological Operational Polar satellite. The productshave mostly been validated against several ground-based data sets both insitu and remotely sensed. The accomplished accuracy for products derived innear real time is sufficient to monitor variability on diurnal and seasonalscales. The demands on accuracy increase the longer the considered time scaleis. Thus, interannual variability or trends can only be assessed if thesensor data are corrected for jumps created by instrument changes onsuccessive satellites and more subtle effects like instrument and orbit driftand also changes to the spectral response function of an instrument. Thus, acentral goal of the recently started Continuous Development and OperationsPhase of the CM-SAF (2007–2012) is to further improve all CM-SAF dataproducts to a quality level that allows for studies of interannualvariability.