Terrestrial Observation Panel on Climate
(GCOS-GTOS)
WOAP-4 Hamburg March 2010
Han Dolman
Chair of TOPC
VU University Amsterdam
TOPC activities
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Contributing to GCOS progress report
Contributing to GCOS-IP
GCOS-GTOS secretariat input
Input WCC-3 white paper
GEO carbon tasks
Developing standards and guidelines
Members involved with specific GTN’s
Progress on the land
GCOS-Progress report
Terrestrial progress
• There has been significant progress in defining internationally
accepted standards for the terrestrial ECVs (move to wards ISO
standardization).
• Progress in establishing institutional support for in situ
networks has been slow,
• The objective of creating a comprehensive and well coordinated
reference network for in situ observations of the fullest possible
range of terrestrial ECVs is a continuing, yet still a largely unmet
challenge
• The establishment of several Global Terrestrial Networks (GTNs)
in a number of areas (e.g. Hydrology, Glaciers, Permafrost),
where data collection takes place largely through in situ
measurements has significantly improved the coordination and
global coverage of these observations
Terrestrial progress
Observations taken for purposes other than climate, but with
climate relevance, are often not made available,.
• Good progress has been made in guaranteeing short-term
continuity in the availability of high-resolution optical
observations from satellites,.
• The increasing commitment of space agencies to produce
fundamental climate data records from existing systems has
led to improved availability of global datasets, such as
burned area and land cover.
• The analysis of historical records, both in situ and satellite
based, has been progressing slowly and needs the urgent
consideration of space agencies together with the potential
users.
Action T12
• Action: Develop Global Terrestrial Network on Soil
Moisture
• Who: Parties’ national services and research programmes,
through IGWCO, GEWEX and TOPC in collaboration with
space agencies.
• Time frame: 2012
• Performance indicator: Fully functional GTN-SM with a set
of in situ observations (possibly co-located with reference
network, cf. T3), with standard measurement protocol and
data quality and archiving procedures.
• Annual Cost Implications: 1-10M USD (40% in non-Annex-I
Parties).
Action T11
• Action: Develop a record of validated globally
gridded near surface soil moisture from satellites
• Who: Parties’ national services and research
programmes, through GEWEX and TOPC in
collaboration with space agencies.
• Time frame: 2014
• Performance indicator Availability of globally
validated soil moisture products from the early
satellites until now.
• Annual Cost Implications: 1-10M USD (10% in
non-Annex-I Parties).
Status
• Satellite soil moisture is top few cm only
• In situ networks
– Rutgers University (Chinese, Russian data)
– Univ. Vienna (ESA) just set up
• There is no ECV documentation on standards
and guidelines
• Organize small workshop with modelers,
assimilators (GEWEX) with ESA?
Action T4: Develop an experimental evaporation product from existing networks and
satellite observations
Who: Parties, national services, research groups through GTN-H, IGWCO and TOPC
Time frame: 3-5 years
Performance indicator: Availability of a validated global satellite product of total
evaporation
Annual Cost Implications: 1-10M USD (10% in non-Annex-I Parties).
Global
Interception loss
Mirrales et al., 2010
• While we have a number of
satellite ECV products, like
albedo, Fapar etc., their
validation is generally poor
• We need to find
a mechanism to get our set
of 35 global reference sites
(linked with Fluxnet) and
CEOS Cal-Val, similar to
GRUAN
Action T3 [IP-04 T3, T29]
• Action: Development of a subset of current LTER and FLUXNET sites
into a global reference network for ecological monitoring sites with
sustained funding perspective.
• Who: Parties’ national services and research agencies, FLUXNET
organizations, NEON, ICOS, in association with CEOS WGCV, CGMSGSICS, GTOS (TCO and TOPC)
• Time-frame: Implementation by 2010
• Performance Indicator: Plan for the development and application
of standardized protocols for the measurements of fluxes and state
variables
• Annual Cost Implications: 30-100M USD (40% in non-Annex-I
Parties).
• See also Actions A15, A27, A30.
• Reference is made to corresponding (not necessarily identical, often
follow-on) Actions in the IP-04, so they exist.
A Global Carbon Tracking System:
Supporting Society’s Important 21st
Century Decisions
• Key driver of current Carbon CoP
activities
• Goal to evaluate progress and future
direction for global carbon observing
system
• More emphasis on data integration
systems and implementation
• GCOS (AOPCC, TOPC, FAO, WMO)
involved
Action T33
• Action: Develop globally gridded estimates of terrestrial
carbon flux from in situ observations and satellite products
and assimilation/inversions models.
• Who: Reanalysis centres, research organisations, in
association with national institutes, space agencies,
FAO/GTOS (TCO and TOPC)
• Time Frame: 2014-2019
• Performance indicator: Availability of data assimilation
systems, and global time series of maps of various
terrestrial components of carbon exchange (e.g. GPP, NEP,
NBP)
• Annual Cost Implications: 10-30M USD (Mainly by Annex-I
Parties).
Joint AOPC/TOPC/OOPC working
group
• The GCOS IP is organized by disciplines, yet
• Some ECVs are intrinsically joint properties of two geophysical media, e.g.,
surface albedo is a joint property of the surface and the atmosphere
• The estimation of some ECVs depends on the values of other ECVs in
different domains, e.g., the retrieval of continental and marine variables
depends on the accuracy of the atmospheric characterization
• The IES/JRC has organized occasional workshops to deal with
these interdisciplinary issues
• The 1st joint working group, in 2007, addressed the issue of simultaneously
estimating aerosol properties and surface albedo
• This 2nd joint working group, in 2009, looked at the feasibility of assessing
the Net Primary Productivity (NPP) of the biosphere globally and
consistently across the land/ocean boundary
TOPC and WOAP
• Are the ECV products tuned to climate
models, can they be used as input or
benchmarks?
• How can we optimize their use?
• TOPC-Clic link, through Konrad
Steffen/Richard Armstrong. Need to be
stronger?
• Consistent production of ECV’s across domains