EGU

April 16, 2024

ESA Climate Office at EGU24

14 April 8:00 am – 19 April @ 5:00 pm Central European Time

This week, members of the ESA Climate Office and scientists contributing to the ESA Climate Change Initiative are convening sessions and presenting their latest research at the EGU General Assembly 2024.

Meet members of the ESA Climate Office at the ESA booth (Hall X2, stand X20) are will also be giving short briefings on our latest R&D tenders relating to the ESA CLIMATE-SPACE programme and also the launch our PhD Mentoring scheme, which is being run as part of the EGU Mentoring Partnership scheme.

Convened sessions & presentations

Tuesday 16 April

Remote Sensing of Soil Moisture

Convener: Klaus Scipal | Co-conveners: Clément Albergel, Alexander Gruber, Nemesio Rodriguez-Fernandez, Jian Peng, Luca Brocca, David Fairbairn
Orals Tue, 16 Apr, 08:30–10:15 (CEST), 14:00–15:36 (CEST), 16:15–17:59 (CEST)
Room 3.29/30

Session description

This session celebrates 20 years of soil moisture remote sensing at the EGU General Assembly. We invite presentations concerning the past, present and future of soil moisture estimation, including remote sensing, field experiments, land surface modelling and data assimilation and soil moisture reference networks and fiducial reference measurements (FRMs).

Over the past two decades, the technique of microwave remote sensing has made tremendous progress to provide robust estimates of surface soil moisture at different scales. From local to landscape scales, several field or aircraft experiments have been organised to improve our understanding of active and passive microwave soil moisture sensing, including the effects of soil roughness, vegetation, spatial heterogeneities, and topography. At continental scales, a series of several passive and active microwave space sensors, including SMMR (1978-1987), AMSR (2002-), ERS/SCAT (1992-2000) provided information on surface soil moisture. Current investigations in L-band passive microwave with SMOS (2009-) and SMAP (2015-), and in active microwave with MetOp/ASCAT series (2006-) and Sentinel-1, enable an accurate quantification of the soil moisture at regional and global scales. Building on the legacy of these mission operational programmes like Copernicus but also novel developments will further enhance our capabilities to monitor soil moisture, and they will ensure continuity of multi-scale soil moisture measurements on climate scales.

New ESA CCI High Resolution Land Cover and Land Cover-Change Maps

Lorenzo Bruzzone, Professor at University of Trento / Clement Albergel ESA
16:15–16:30 | ESA Booth Hall X2, stand X20

The briefing will present the products generated by the ESA Climate Change Initiative High Resolution Land Cover project to investigate the role of the spatial resolution of Land Cover and Land Cover Change in supporting climate modelling research at regional scale. The characteristics of the 10m/30m land cover and land-cover change products will be presented with a video and live demos on how downloading and using the maps.

A Scoping Study for a NASA Tropical Forest Terrestrial Ecology Campaign

Convener: Elsa Ordway
Tue, 16 Apr, 19:00–20:00 (CEST)
Room 2.44

Session description

"The tropics are experiencing dramatic changes as a result of climate change and land-use change. Shifts in carbon flux dynamics, water cycling, and species composition are resulting in feedbacks with globally important consequences for biodiversity, climate change, and food production.

Yet, we also know that the tropical forests are not uniform. Their species diversity, climate, soils, and human impact vary enormously from the Americas to Africa to Asia. As a result, tropical forest ecosystems are already showing evidence of varying responses to climate and land-use change. However, these differences remain highly uncertain and poorly understood.
PANGEA is a NASA funded effort to scope a 6- to 9-year multi-scale campaign in the tropics focused on improving understanding of the heterogeneous responses to climate change, with broad research focus on biodiversity, biogeochemical cycling, and food security.

We have one year to work with the international research and end-user communities to outline a possible campaign in the tropics. At the end of 2024, we will submit a white paper to NASA detailing our proposal. If selected, the campaign would support coordinated fieldwork and airborne remote sensing data collection that will inform our use of satellite remote sensing and modeling to better understand the change dynamics in the tropics. We will work across NASA programs (carbon cycle science, biodiversity, hydrology, applied science programs on agriculture and disaster resilience, and more) as well as with other U.S. and international funding agencies and donors. Although there is no guarantee that NASA will support the recommended project, this is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to assemble multi-disciplinary research communities to align efforts and outline a focused campaign.

Wednesday 17 April

ESA Climate Office Mentoring Scheme – What is it and how to apply

Sarah Connors, ESA Climate Applications Scientist

12:30-12:45 | ESA Booth Hall X2, stand X20

Briefing description

The ESA Climate Office Mentoring Scheme offers pastoral mentoring and career advice from individuals working at the Climate Office to PhD candidates. ESA Climate Office team members come from a variety of backgrounds and have progressed through several different career trajectories (academia, industry, policy etc.). The Scheme aims to support professional orientation and clarification of career goals, to broaden your professional network, and to enhance personal strengths and development. Many of the EGU Division topics are applicable for careers related to earth observation (climate, geodesy, cryosphere etc.) and, as such, the scheme aims to highlight relevant ESA projects to Early Career Scientists.

ESA CCI Soil Moisture community workshop

Convener: Wouter Dorigo | Co-conveners: Pietro Stradiotti, Thomas Frederikse, Martin Hirschi, Nemesio Rodriguez-Fernandez
Wed, 17 Apr, 14:00–15:45 (CEST) Room 2.97
Session: SPM73

Session description

The ESA's Climate Change Initiative for Soil Moisture data record is reaching in Spring 2024 its 9th version, providing a wealth of satellite based observations spanning over 4 decades aimed at improving our Climate System understanding.

This workshop wants to bring together the product development team and its user base, with the goal of shaping new product specifications tailored to the needs of the climate community.

The workshop participants will have a chance to learn more about the ESA CCI SM products---including their latest development and applications---, to provide guided feedback during the interactive session, and to participate in the open community discussion.

Join us if you have experience with the initiative and would like to contribute, or if you wish to use or simply improve your understanding of the data!

High Resolution Land Cover ESA CCI

Convener: Lluís Pesquer | Co-convener: Cristina Domingo-Marimon
Wed, 17 Apr, 10:45–12:30 (CEST) Room 2.97
Session: SPM81

Session description

Within the framework of European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative, the High Resolution (HR) Land Cover (LC) Essential Climate Variable (ECV) project presents their products generated at Phase 1. The HRLC team presents the project products and some examples for the historical and the static maps, the LC change maps and the additional quality layers. We are very interested in your feedback for the improvements on phase 2. More info at https://climate.esa.int/en/projects/high-resolution-land-cover/

Satellite observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane

Maximillian Reuter, Senior scientist at the Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Bremen
16:15-16:30 | ESA Booth Hall X2, stand X20

The ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI) greenhouse gas project team conduct research and development to develop new or improve existing retrieval algorithms to generate high-quality Essential Climate Variable (ECV) greenhouse gas (GHG) data products from existing satellites. Several data products generated in the past are now generated operationally via the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). With the GHG-CCI project we focus on new satellites or on new or improved retrieval algorithms not yet part of C3S. This includes carbon dioxide (CO2) and/or methane (CH4) retrievals from Sentinel-5-Precursor, OCO-2, GOSAT-2, PRISMA and EnMap. Here we present an overview about this activity focussing on latest results.

Thursday 18 April

ESA Climate Office Mentoring Scheme – What is it and how to apply

Sarah Connors, ESA Climate Applications Scientist
12:30-12:45 | ESA Booth Hall X2, stand X20

Briefing description

CMIP in Policy

Sarah Connors, ESA Climate Applications Scientist
13:30–13:45 | ESA Booth Hall X2, stand X20

ESA Climate Office Upcoming Invitations to Tender

Sarah Connors, ESA Climate Applications Scientist
15:45–16:00 | ESA Booth Hall X2, stand X20

New ESA CCI High Resolution Land Cover and Land Cover-Change Maps

Lorenzo Bruzzone, Professor at University of Trento / Lluís Pesquer Mayos, Researcher at CREAF

16:15–16:30 | ESA Booth Hall X2, stand X20