Recent Advances and Challenges of Monitoring Climate Change from Space

Abstract

Extreme weather and climate events have over the years impacted human society and have currently become a more complex challenge with the changing climate. Many more climate change consequences have been recognized due to various environmental and social stresses in the last few decades. One way to assess the impacts of observed climate change is by viewing the Earth from space. Monitoring climate change from space is one of the most important and challenging responsibilities. Satellite remote sensing measurements can make the task of monitoring the entire Earth relatively easy with low costs; thus, environment and weather satellite measurements provide the ability to observe and predict the Earth’s environment and weather while improving the accuracy. Satellite observations make a significant contribution to the Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) and their associated data sets and products of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) which was established to ensure that all users have access to the climate observations, data records, and information which they require to address pressing climate-related concerns. Generating climate data records with multi-mission and multi-instrument measurements is difficult and complex because of the spectral spatial, temporal, and angular coverage issues. Cross-sensor calibration and validation play a pivotal role relative to understanding the climate and its trends—an important issue. The applications of satellite data for climate change are summarized based on the 20 chapters in this book, and recent advances of climate change monitoring from space are discussed. Monitoring climate change from space presents major challenges that will be briefly summarized. The era of collecting satellite images from space is rapidly being replaced by the era of “Satellite Climatology” as the time series of satellite measurements has reached over 30 years of extended applications and use.