Simon Pinnock ESA Technical Officer

GlobCOLOUR: Context and Motivation ESA Earth Observation Envelope Programme ESA EOEP-3 Declaration: Specific Objectives...[abridged]… advance the Earth Science agenda respond to the challenges of global change and of anthropogenic effects on our environment, through the development of appropriate new monitoring tools… guarantee easy access to Earth Observation data, including higher level products, for both science and application uses; ensure the maximum scientific return on ESA’s investments in Earth Observation; Data User Element (of EOEP) Building user communities through Development and Demonstration of user-driven applications of EO data Exploitation of ESA Earth Observation satellites: - ERS 1 & 2 - ENVISAT - Earth Explorers: Cryosat-2, SMOS, GOCE, etc. - GMES Sentinels Drawing on research in national and European science programmes Supporting the Earth Science agenda: GlobCARBON, GlobAEROSOL, GlobICE, GlobVOLCANO, GlobWetlands, GlobCOLOUR, Medspiration, DesertWatch, etc. Supporting future GMES services - Laying the foundations of a European Service for Global Ocean Colour - Working towards the vision of routine assimilation of all available observations supporting GMES user needs (GlobMODEL)

GlobCOLOUR: Context and Motivation Data User Element Working Process: User consultation and formation of a User Group, who provide: User Requirements Document Letter of Commitment to actively participate in the project to Confirm and elaborate the User Requirements as necessary Provide technical guidance to the project Participate in the validation of the products and service To assess the utility of the products and service ESA issues a competitive invitation to tender for the work necessary to satisfy the identified requirements – open to EOEP programme participants (i.e. ESA member states) Projects awarded to European consortia consisting of combination of skills scientific researchers, systems developers, etc. Regular user consultation during progress of the project - Attendance at progress meetings - Endorsement of key documents Phased project plan with annual contractual go/no-go milestones

GlobCOLOUR: Context and Motivation Why GlobCOLOUR? Ocean colour is an "essential climate variable" needed to support the carbon cycle monitoring requirements of the UNFCCC (Second Report on the Adequacy of the Global Observing Systems for Climate in Support of the UNFCCC, WMO-TD1143 and GCOS-82 report, April 2003.) Encouraging full exploitation of ENVISAT MERIS and Sentinel-3 ocean colour instrument Operational applications addressed in GMES MARCOAST, but not global change science, e.g. quantification of biological carbon pump, monitoring effects of acidification on the ocean ecosystem. Early user Consultations with IOCCG, and later IOCCP …led to identification of a strong User Requirement to make combined use of all available global ocean colour observations to provide the best possible ocean colour climate data record to support global change research IOCCG Data Merging Working Group - Demonstrated the maturity of data merging methods and the feasibility of achieving the above goal - IOCCG Data Merging Report in final draft form (ed: Watson Gregg, NASA)

GlobCOLOUR: Context and Motivation Specific Objectives of GlobCOLOUR: demonstrate the utility and value of EO-based services to the global ocean colour user community to provide a long time-series of ocean-colour information for research on the marine component of the global carbon cycle; to put in place the capacity to continue production of this time series in the future; to demonstrate the current state of the art in merging together data streams from different satellite based ocean-colour sensors; to demonstrate a global NRT ocean-colour service based on merged satellite data. Specific User Requirements: Deliver a long time series of consistently calibrated global ocean colour from all available EO sensors: - Chl, TSM, CDOM, water leaving radiances, diffuse attenuation coeff, quality flags, etc , 4km, daily, global Validate against in-situ and intercomparison with other global ocean colour data sets Provide lower spatial/temporal resolution versions of the data set for model assimilation Diagnostic Data Set for validation and further algorithm development

GlobCOLOUR: Context and Motivation The GlobCOLOUR Project: ESA funded project: Budget = k€ 950 Kick-Off = 15 Nov 2005 Year 1 – Development, prototyping and testing Year 2 – Production of data set and validation against in-situ Year 3 – One-year demonstration NRT service Consortium: ACRI-ST (F) LOV (F) University of Plymouth (UK) Brockmann Consult (D) NIVA (N) ICESS (USA) DLR (D) User Group: IOCCG - Ocean Colour Science Requirements IOCCP- Ocean Carbon Science Requirements UKMO-NCOF- Operational Application Requirements

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