GAIA-CLIM and FIDUCEO joint meeting

         

ECMWF | Reading | 8 February 2017

This is a joint meeting between two Horizon-2020 projects: the GAIA-CLIM project and the FIDUCEO project.

The projects have the common goal of improving our ability to perform absolute calibration of earth observation data. This is particularly important for climate studies and will also lead to benefits for numerical weather prediction (NWP) and other applications.

The GAIA-CLIM project focuses on improving the use of ground-based and in-situ observations for calibrating and validating satellite data. One aspect of this is the use of NWP fields for assessing new satellite data, while using reference in-situ data to validate the NWP fields. The main outputs of the GAIA-CLIM project include a Virtual Observatory tool to facilitate the satellite to non-satellite observation comparisons and a gap assessment document that will inform subsequent Horizon 2020 activities.

The FIDUCEO project aims to re-process historical satellite datasets, developing four new Fundamental Climate Data Records (FCDRs) with state-of-the art uncertainty estimates, for the MVIRI, HIRS, AVHRR and AMSU-B/MHS instruments. It will develop a further five Climate Data Records (CDRs), demonstrating how observation uncertainties can be propagated into derived geophysical datasets.

Both projects have now completed two years of work and will independently have their General Assemblies in the same week: GAIA-CLIM at ECMWF and FIDUCEO at the University of Reading.

The joint meeting at ECMWF on 8 February is an opportunity for the two projects to explore synergies, plan possible joint activities, and discuss how their work might feed in to activities of the Copernicus services. There will be a number of joint GAIA-CLIM/FIDUCEO talks, and time set aside for discussion in smaller working groups.

GAIA-CLIM partners

NERSC, National University of Ireland Maynooth, BIRA-IASB, BK Scientific, CNR-IMAA, ECMWF, EUMETSAT, FMI, KIT, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Met Office, NPL, RNMI, Tallinn University of Technology, University of Bergamo, University of Bremen, University of Helsinki, University of Lille.

FIDUCEO partners

University of Reading, ASSIMILA, Brockmann Consult, DLR, EUMETSAT, FastOpt, IPMA, NPL, Rayference, STFC, University of Hamburg, University of Leicester.