Observations and Monitoring Systems

1
Observations and Monitoring Systems

• John Townshend
• University of Maryland

Chair, Global Observations of Forest Cover
/Global Observations of Landcover Dynamics, Panel
of the Global Terrestrial Observing System
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Outline

• Improving international coordination
• Improving international organizations
• Land observations
• Observations in themselves are not enough
• Accessibility of climate record

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Improving international coordination

• Crucial that the US response is closely
  coordinated with the international community.
• Additional support for observations especially in
  developing countries is crucial.
• Needs to be better, more objective assessments of
  the incremental benefits of adding observations
  using assimilation and models.
• Importance of the Integrated Global Observation
  Strategy as an organizing framework for satellite
  and in situ observations. Needs to become a
  System
• Links the space agencies through CEOS and the key
  international groups responsible for observations
  (WMO, UNESCO, UNEP, FAO, ICSU)

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Improving international organizations

• Support the global observing systems as
  organizations
• We need more than international coordination and
  commitment we need national commitments to
  support them.
• Raise the status of the global observing systems
  within their UN international organizations and
  amongst nations to make them work.
• Its wrong to talk about repairing something
  that has never worked.
• Highly inadequate international coordinating
  mech-anisms especially for terrestrial climate
  observations.
• Absence of an international technical commission
  such as that established for oceans - joint body
  for oceanography and marine meteorology (JCOMM)

5
Land observations

• Land observations are essential
• to assess the impact of climate change on
  ecosystems and to understand ecosystems as
  forcing functions
• Operational terrestrial observations of land
  cover and ecosystem functioning are often
  inadequate.
• Need to support link existing terrestrial in
  situ observations
• Requirements have been formulated in detail.
• Terrestrial Carbon Observations Global
  Observations of Forest Cover /Global Observations
  of Landcover Dynamics Terrestrial Observations
  Panel for Climate
• In terms of products and payoffs we need to
  recognize the value of ecosystem services and how
  potentially these may be improved and worsened.
• Validation of products from space observations.

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Observations in themselves are not enough

• Focus is needed on the products to be generated.
• Requires an end-to-end approach from observations
  to products and their use.
• Absence of a single critical component can
  prevent creation of the record
• Major example is land cover, where there are
  still no funded program to generate global land
  cover change products which are crucially needed
  and have been recommended for several years.
• Despite having the observatory (Landsat),
  acquisition strategies, the archives and
  information systems.

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Accessibility of climate record

• High priority for information accessibility
• Integrating distributed information systems
  nationally has improved
• e.g the Earth Science Federation, but need to
  encourage this internationally as well.
• Obtaining data, products and records is usually
  much easier through the US than through
  international partners.
• Access to data is hindered by multiple interfaces
  to meta-data as well as the data themselves
• Too much emphasis in report on architecture of
  heterogeneous systems emphasis should be on
  interfaces and linking and the standards and
  protocols needed to achieve them.
• Needs to be explicit tracking of information so
  that conclusions can be tracked to the
  information and observations on which they were
  based.