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, GlobCover, GlobAerosol, GlobIce, GlobVolcano, GlobColour, Medspiration, GlobWave, GlobSnow, 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 Why GlobColour? Ocean colour is an "essential climate variable" needed to support the carbon cycle monitoring requirements of the UNFCCC… …to understand the role of the biological pump in mitigating CO2 emissions …to understand ocean biology, and what will happen to it under future changing conditions of warming, acidification, salinity, circulation, … Encouraging full exploitation of ENVISAT MERIS and GMES Sentinel-3 ocean colour instruments. 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 Note: IOCCG recommendation on merging in Report #2 (1999). IOCCG Data Merging Working Group meeting (May 2005) Demonstrated the maturity of data merging methods and the feasibility of achieving the above goal, building on research programs such as SIMBIOS. IOCCG Data Merging Report (IOCCG #5) published 2007. Given that the oceans contain 50 times the carbon contained in the atmosphere, it’s very important to understand what is going to happen to the oceans in a future changing climate.

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. - 1997-2007, 4km, daily, weekly, monthly, globally Validate against in-situ and intercompare 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 Data User Element Working Process: 1. 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 clarify 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 2. 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) 3. Projects awarded to European consortia consisting of combination of skills scientific researchers, systems developers, etc. 4. Regular user consultation during progress of the project Attendance at progress meetings Endorsement of key documents Evaluation Phased project plan with annual contractual go/no-go milestones Don’t pay the user

GlobColour: Context and Motivation The GlobColour Project: ESA project: Budget = k€ 975 Kick-Off = 15 Nov 2005 Year 1 2006 – Development, prototyping and testing Year 2 2007 – Production of data set and validation against in-situ Year 3 2008 – One-year demonstration NRT service Consortium: ACRI-ST (F) LOV (F) University of Plymouth (UK) ARGANS Ltd (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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