Climate change impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016

Strengthening the knowledge base
The report concludes the following for space-based
components of the observing system:
• The newer and planned generations of operational
meteorological satellite systems offer improved
quality and a broader range of measurements.
• The European Copernicus programme (see
Section 7.1.2) is placing additional types of
observation on an operational basis, with
increased coverage and quality of measurements,
and accompanying service provision.
• There have been increases in the numbers of
national providers, cooperative international
missions and other collaborative arrangements.
• The generation and supply of products derived
from space-based observations have progressed
well.
• Data access is becoming more open, although
there is still progress to be made. Some data
remain to be recovered from early missions,
and long-term preservation of data, including
occasional reprocessing, is not yet fully ensured.
Regarding essential climate variables (e.g. for the
atmosphere and cryosphere), the conclusions from
GCOS as presented in this section are also relevant for
and applicable to Europe.
7.1.2 Copernicus climate change service
Copernicus is the European Union Earth observation
programme designed to provide uninterrupted,
independent and accurate data and information on
environmental and security matters for Europe. The
regulation establishing the 'Copernicus' programme
was approved and entered into force in April 2014
(EU, 2014c).
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) ( 136 )
provides access to information for monitoring and
predicting climate change and will, therefore, help to
support adaptation and mitigation. It benefits from
a sustained network of in situ and satellite-based
observations, reanalysis of the Earth's climate, and
modelling scenarios based on a variety of climate
projections.
The launch in April 2014 of Sentinel-1A saw the first
spacecraft out of a series of six so-called Sentinel
families to go into orbit, all of which should be
operational by around 2022. It was followed by the
launch of Sentinel-2A in June 2015. The European
Space Agency (ESA) is responsible for developing the
Sentinels on behalf of the European Union; operation
will be shared with the European Organisation for the
Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT),
while other institutions provide products and services
based on the data from these and complementary
satellites.
The service will provide access to several climate
indicators (e.g. temperature increase, sea level rise,
ice sheet melting and warming of the ocean) and
climate indices (e.g. based on records of temperature,
precipitation and drought events) for both the identified
climate drivers and the expected climate impacts. Time
scales will range from decades to centuries (i.e. based
on the instrumental record). The service will maximise
the use of past, current and future Earth observations
(from both in situ and satellite observing systems)
in conjunction with modelling, supercomputing and
networking capabilities. This conjunction will produce a
consistent, comprehensive and credible description of
the past, current and future climate.
In November 2014, the European Commission signed
a Delegation Agreement with ECMWF (European
Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) for
the implementation of the service. The first stage of
implementation will be dedicated to the so called 'proof
of concept' (2015–2016), that is, capacity-building and
testing of the overall architecture. The pre-operational
stage will be in 2017, while the operational stage
(phase 1) is planned to be reached in 2018.
The portfolio of service products will include:
• consistent estimates of multiple essential climate
variables;
• global and regional reanalyses (covering a
comprehensive Earth system domain: atmosphere,
ocean, land, carbon);
• products based on observations alone (gridded,
homogenised station series and reprocessed climate
data records);
• a near-real-time climate monitoring facility;
• multi-model seasonal forecasts;
• climate projections at global and regional scales.
( 136 ) http://www.copernicus.eu/main/climate-change and https://climate.copernicus.eu.
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