Quality Assurance Framework Development Based on Six New ECV Data Products to Enhance User Confidence for Climate Applications

Abstract

Data from Earth observation (EO) satellites are increasingly used to monitor the environment, understand variability and change, inform evaluations of climate model forecasts, and manage natural resources. Policymakers are progressively relying on the information derived from these datasets to make decisions on mitigating and adapting to climate change. These decisions should be evidence based, which requires confidence in derived products, as well as the reference measurements used to calibrate, validate, or inform product development. In support of the European Union's Earth Observation Programmes Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the Quality Assurance for Essential Climate Variables (QA4ECV) project fulfilled a gap in the delivery of climate quality satellite-derived datasets, by prototyping a generic system for the implementation and evaluation of quality assurance (QA) measures for satellite-derived ECV climate data record products. The project demonstrated the QA system on six new long-term, climate quality ECV data records for surface albedo, leaf area index (LAI), fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR), nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), formaldehyde (HCHO), and carbon monoxide (CO). The provision of standardised QA information provides data users with evidence-based confidence in the products and enables judgement on the fitness-for-purpose of various ECV data products and their specific applications.

Towards a Traceable Climate Service: Assessment of Quality and Usability of Essential Climate Variables

“…All these call for an overarching structure for the assessment of quality and usability of ECV products, across the single-products, multi-products and thematic products. Based on current major initiatives and studies for the development of ECV inventory [22,23,33,[43][44][45][46][47][48], our paper synthesizes and proposes the overarching structure as shown in Figure 1.…”

“…Traceability in the Earth observation context can be defined as "a property of an often multi-step process whereby the result can be related to its data source(s) (and ideally to international standards) through a documented unbroken chain of operations including calibrations" [8]. The first level of traceability corresponds to the documentary traceability, which refers to the provision of detailed provenance information or metadata concerning product development [22]. The metrological traceability extends further to encompass a full analysis of the propagation of uncertainties from end-to-end through the algorithm and validation stages [22].…”

“…The first level of traceability corresponds to the documentary traceability, which refers to the provision of detailed provenance information or metadata concerning product development [22]. The metrological traceability extends further to encompass a full analysis of the propagation of uncertainties from end-to-end through the algorithm and validation stages [22].…”

“…The above two challenges have inspired two main groups of research focuses: (1) the quality assurance of climate data and information products (e.g., QA4ECV [7], QA4EO [8], GAIA-CLIM [9], FIDUCEO [10], CORE-CLIMAX [11], C3S EQC projects [12][13][14][15][16]); (2) the market value of climate services (EU-MACS [17,18], MARCO [18,19], EUPORIAS [20], C3S Sectoral Information System Projects [21]) (see the Appendix A for a list of key acronyms and abbreviations used in this paper). The prototyped quality assurance (QA) framework for climate data records has been recently developed [22] and implemented for a selection of 12 Essential Climate Variables (ECVs), with in total 24 products [23]. Nevertheless, the evaluation of the usability of climate data and information products is not yet comprehensively addressed, which hinders the overall market uptake of climate services [24,25].…”

Seeing Sustainability from Space: Using Earth Observation Data to Populate the UN Sustainable Development Goal Indicators

“…This would require establishing a platform and framework for supplying evidence, potentially for peer reviewing of that evidence and for presenting summary information and outcomes in a manner that is helpful to users. The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service has been developing a similar concept for the publication of climate data records [50] which includes a framework for presenting fitness-for-purpose of such records, along with peer review of data quality. We suggest that the MMF 2.0 could be developed in a similar manner into an operational tool, recognising that the climate data record framework will have taken approximately a decade from initial concept to implementation.…”