Producing global land cover maps consistent over time to respond the needs of the climate modelling community

Abstract

Supported by the European Space Agency, the Climate Change Initiative land cover project focuses on the land cover in order to contribute to the corresponding Essential Climate Variable. Consultation mechanisms were established with the climate modelling community in order to identify its specific needs in terms of satellite-based global land cover products. Key findings were the needs for stable land cover data and a dynamic component in form of time-series and for consistency among the different datasets used as input to climate models. As response, an innovative global land cover mapping approach, based on multi-year earth observation datasets is proposed.