News & Events

Dec. 6, 2018

ESA expands climate dataset portfolio

Nine new projects added to Climate Change Initiative

ESA has added nine new projects to its flagship climate initiative as part of ongoing efforts to systematically observe and collect data in support of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The three-year projects join the ESA Climate Change Initiative, a research programme focused on generating global datasets for the key components of Earth’s climate – known as essential climate variables or ECVs.

The projects will generate climate-quality datasets by reassessing and reprocessing archived satellite data that ESA, together with its Member States, have established over the last 40 years.

When merged with observations from current satellite missions, the resulting climate records will be of sufficient length to provide climate researchers with powerful data products to understand the climate system and improve the models used to predict the effects of climate change.