report copernicus polar and snow cover applications … · 2019-07-25 · commerce, water...

USER REQUIREMENTS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE COPERNICUS SPACE COMPONENT Doc. No. 20123/16 V2/16, issue 2.0, dated 04/08/2016

© European Commission, 2016 Polar & Snow Cover Applications User Requirements Workshop Report of 12

European Commission

Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW)

Aerospace, Maritime and Defence Industries

Copernicus: Infrastructures

SPECIFIC CONTRACT No 2 - 30-CE-0747761100-24

ORGANISATION OF WORKSHOPS FOR GATHERING SETS OF REQUIREMENTS TO BE FULFILLED BY THE NEXT

GENERATION COPERNICUS SPACE COMPONENT Implementing Framework Service Contract 386/PP/2014/FC (30-CE-0672813/00-46) of

05/12/2014, requirements framework for the next generation of the Copernicus space component

REPORT

COPERNICUS POLAR AND SNOW COVER

APPLICATIONS USER REQUIREMENTS

WORKSHOP

23 JUNE 2016, BRUSSELS

PRODUCED BY: SPACETEC PARTNERS

APPROVED BY: GMV



1WORKSHOP REPORT

1.1. INTRODUCTION

The European Commission (EC), who is responsible for the Copernicus programme, has initiated an action with the objective of gathering user requirements for the Next Generation of the Copernicus Space Component (CSC).

This workshop was organised in the context of the second specific contract “Organisation Of Workshops For Gathering Sets Of Requirements To Be Fulfilled By The Next Generation Copernicus Space Component” of the Framework Service Contract 386/PP/2014/FC.

The event aimed to gather, examine and consolidate user requirements, and confront these with major gaps to be potentially addressed by the Next Generation of the CSC. This was a unique opportunity for the attendees to provide the EC with their priorities in terms of data, products and information at large, as a function of their mandates and activities. The workshop was not intended primarily to discuss technical requirements and specifications for satellites and instruments.

The audience was composed of users, service providers, representatives from the scientific community, the European Commission, ESA and EUMETSAT. Over 90 people registered for the workshop, and 70 actually attended the event.

The workshop has been structured in two sessions: Polar regions and Snow Cover monitoring. Each session had its own panel discussion (with a duration of approximately one hour) during which the audience had the opportunity to make statements and present needs/requirements, while expressing their reactions to the content presented.

The agenda and the list of participants are available in Annex 1 and Annex 2, respectively.

USER REQUIREMENTS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE COPERNICUS SPACE COMPONENT Doc. No. 20123/16 V2/16, issue 2.0, dated 04/08/201619/04/2016


1.2. MAIN POINTS AND RESULTS

The content and outcomes of the workshop are herein reported following the structure of the event. The presentations are available for download at http://copernicus.eu/polar-snow-workshop under the “Material” tab.

The introduction by Peter Breger, Deputy Head of Unit of the Copernicus unit of DG GROW, emphasised the role of this (and of similar) workshops in shaping the position of the EU regarding the general evolution of Copernicus and of its space component. This workshop was designed to contribute to update the body of requirements for the Copernicus services and the space component by considering as drivers the changes which are taking place in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the continental areas covered by snow.

The role that Copernicus could play by providing up-to-date, accurate and timely information about the polar regions is closely linked to the increasing needs for defining new and evolutionary European policies for these areas, responding to the increasing rate of changes in various economic sectors (maritime traffic, mining for example), Climate Change related matters, but also addressing issues faced by people living in the Arctic and in the neighbouring areas, which are bound to be affected by these changes.

In addition, snow significantly affects daily life and economy in many European territories. Heavy seasonal snow notoriously disrupts transport, but changes in snow precipitation can also have an impact on business and commerce, water provision, hydroelectric power supplies, agriculture, tourism and recreational activities. Moreover, snow also plays an important role in regulating the Earth’s climate by being an important element of the water cycle, by reflecting incident solar radiation back out to space and by acting as a thermal insulator. Thus, it is of utmost importance to monitor changes in the extent, duration, thickness and properties of snow over both land and ice.

The objectives of the workshop were presented as an opportunity for a thorough review of consolidated and emerging requirements for the monitoring of the polar regions and of snow covered areas; the logic imposed to start from the current “offer” of satellite measurements and derived products by reviewing what the Copernicus services deliver, or plan to deliver, then proceed to identifying observation gaps, and lastly attempting to highlight relevant solutions.

This report follows this logic, by presenting the highlights of the presentations, followed by summary points resulting from the questions and answers, the user discussion panels, as well as the concluding remarks and, lastly, some key findings.

1.2.1. POLAR REGIONS SESSION

The presentation by ECMWF (covering both the climate and atmosphere services) confirmed that the current Copernicus services offer relevant products for Polar regions monitoring, for Arctic in particular, while it noted the threat stemming from the progressive reduction in the availability of snow-related observations and in situ measurements (e.g. snow depth). The need for Snow Water Equivalent products was finally emphasised.

Following the same line, the presentation by Dr Garric (Mercator Océan) focused on the findings of the position paper “CMEMS Requirements for Polar Monitoring”. He reinforced the fact that the current Copernicus service already offers several products derived from satellite observations: sea ice coverage, thickness, drift, edge, type and iceberg density. It also delivers estimates of snow thickness and sea ice albedo. These measurements could and should be continued and expanded, and provide in particular:

Continuation and improvement of the sea ice thickness time series from Cryosat-2 for climate and operational sea ice monitoring activities (including assimilation in sea ice models).

Continuation of the altimetry sampling over the ocean in Polar Regions (data assimilation) (e.g. for improved ocean currents).



Reliable sea level measurements with the retrieval accuracy required to monitor Climate Change.

Continuation of SMOS-like observations of thin sea ice below ~0.5 m.

Sustainable operation of medium-resolution (5-10 km) multi-frequency and -polarization passive microwave observations of sea ice lead fraction and sea ice concentration, area and extent.

Automated production of ice chart-like products from a combination of SAR data and other data (e.g. bi-static SAR, passive microwave, multi-frequency SAR).

Reliable restitution of ocean colour in the marginal ice zone

In this context the results of the CryoSat-2 mission cannot be ignored, and were thoroughly reviewed by Prof A. Shepherd who insisted on the need for operational continuity of a CryoSat-like mission with enhanced instruments and performance. Significant attention should be paid to the issue of orbits; Sun-Synchronous satellites such as Sentinel-3, with an orbit covering up to ~81.5 degrees latitude, omit large parts of the polar zones (about 70%) and several critical elements of the cryosphere.

Polar regions remote sensing leaves several questions open or only partially answered. Many of these questions are cross cutting across several areas and both the scientific progress and the operational support to human activities in the Arctic requires the development of more sophisticated models, combining satellite and in situ measurements. This was the subject of the presentation delivered by Johnny A. Johannessen. New models are being developed and an Integrated Arctic Observing System should be rapidly designed (it is actually the object of a study under H2020 to be started in 2017). Dr Johannessen emphasised that despite the invaluable insights which satellite observations provide, comprehensive in situ observations remain indispensable for understanding and modelling of ocean dynamics in the arctic and estimation of heat flux from ocean to atmosphere. He also emphasised the importance of the measurements of snow on top of the sea-ice, which remains a key observation to be continued and secured in the future.

The current geopolitical situation reinforces the necessity of shared responsibilities at international level for implementing an integrated system of measurements in the Arctic.

Such a system should be supported by a consistent set of satellite data products for polar seas:

SEA ICE CONCENTRATION, EXTENT, TYPE & AGE

SEA ICE DRIFT AND DEFORMATION

SEA ICE THICKNESS

SEA ICE FREEBOARD HEIGHT

SEA ICE SURFACE TEMPERATURE

LEAD FRACTION

MELTPONDS

SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE

SEA LEVEL

SURFACE CURRENT

VECTOR WIND

OCEAN COLOUR

Some instruments are currently providing part of these measurements:

• Multi-frequency Passive Microwave Radiometry: Low-resolution (~25 km) sea ice concentration, area and extent, sea ice types, and sea ice drift, Sea surface temperature, near surface wind speed.

• SAR: High-resolution for iceberg, sea ice deformation, drift, sea ice roughness, lead fractions and ridges



• Scatterometry: medium-resolution (~10 km) sea ice concentration, area and extent, sea ice types, and sea ice drift. Wind vector in ice free waters.

• Altimetry: open ocean sea level and sea surface height and hence dynamic topography and surface geostrophic current, Snow depth, Sea level in the leads

• IR radiometry: High-resolution sea and ice surface temperature • Spectrometry Chlorophyll a concentration and distribution. Used for estimation of phytoplankton

concentration. • L-band Passive Microwave: thin sea ice with thickness less than ~0.5 m, Sea surface salinity but with

questionable sensitivity in cold water regions.

As pointed out earlier, CMEMS is delivering some of the required products, but the availability of appropriate satellite measurements restricts their accuracy, frequency and spatial coverage. A more detailed list of such requirements is included in the presentation by Dr Garric. Prof Johannessen re-iterated the call to reverse the current negative trend for the availability of in-situ measurements

A slightly different view was introduced by the speakers of the Polaris Consortium, which focused on operational issues.

The study conducted by the Polaris group provides a rather complete set of requirements derived from the review of 250 parameters subdivided in 10 themes and, unlike other studies and presentations, it puts more emphasis on SAR measurements.

Mr Arthurs from Polar View pointed out the importance of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), of multi-band SAR and of the coupling of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery. Dr Forsberg stressed the benefits of the S-1A-S-1B joint operation scheme, and in general of the use of dual and tri-frequency SAR, e.g. from a tandem between Sentinel-1 satellites and an L-band SAR; InSAR is essential for Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), while dual frequency altimeters will meet surface elevation change requirements; lastly, GRACE instrument measurements should be used to complement the observation in terms of ice mass change. In conclusion of the Polaris presentation, Dr Qeld Qvistgaard, from the IICWG, stressed the role of improved sea ice and iceberg monitoring models to support shipping and off shore operations, including search-and-rescue in harsh conditions.

In the course of the user discussion panel several important points were raised by the audience and by the panellists:

1. A new communication on Arctic policy will be shortly issued by the European Commission. The current study and the service operators should consider it.

2. A daily revisit time or better and a resolution of 5-10 m seem to be two common requirements for an important part of the user community, particularly to support automated sea ice mapping services

3. A representative of ice services for ice breakers remarked that captains do not need re-elaborated charts but direct satellite images, like in the Baltic, plus 3 days meteo projections and ice height data.

4. Near real-time (NRT) delivery of products within 1-2 hours from acquisition is needed, together again with higher resolution (10 m pixels, 2-3 m in sensitive ice infested waters).

5. Can SMOS data deliver information about pH of sea surface (and therefore about acidification of sea water)? Could this become an operational product?

6. There is a strong need to accurately measure the effects of black carbon on the Arctic environment and validate space-based remote sensing

7. Comments on the current Copernicus services:



a. CAMS should deliver estimates of fluxes from the atmosphere to all the components of the Earth system.

b. CMEMS should deliver a more holistic projection of the Earth system as a whole, through a better integration of space and in situ data with models.

8. The successor of CryoSat-2 should exploit dual frequency altimeters to deliver snow data, improved ice sheet elevation and regional sea level variations.

9. There are not enough observations of the atmosphere in the Arctic. The prediction models’ performance in the Arctic is poor. Different orbits are required.

10. Improvements should be made in the synergetic use off the Copernicus fleet (spacecraft duty cycle, coordinated observations, etc.)

11. Further emphasis was eventually given multi-frequency SAR offers.

1.2.2. SNOW COVER SESSION

Three presentations introduced the subject, all of them insisting on comparable issues:

The importance of monitoring seasonal snow cover (for water cycle, water resources, energy and radiation budget).

The crucial role played by snow and ice processes for the improvement of land surface models and of climate models.

The need to monitor snow cover and its links to permafrost evolution and carbon exchange.

And, once more, the importance of in situ measurements for some critical parameters such as Snow Water Equivalent (SWE), river discharge estimates, snow height.

The products, besides SWE, should include snow depth, the total snow area, the melting snow extent, the snow and ice albedo, the snow and ice surface temperature, the snow grain size.

The snow services should permit the anticipation of natural hazards, such as floods, debris liberated by the permafrost changes, avalanches and the associated risks for infrastructures. River discharges should be forecasted at least 48 hours ahead of the event.

The workshop participants estimated that is too early to assess the impact of Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2 but requirements certainly go in the direction of improved spatial and temporal resolutions in all areas, including for products such as SWE.

Moreover, the audience stressed the importance of correct forecasts for freezing and thawing events for the forest industry in northern countries. Changes in albedo should be followed, even small ones. There is also general convergence of opinions about the types of products, as mentioned above.

During the Panel, some speakers emphasised the importance of an appropriate phasing between different missions (and not only between the different units of one given Sentinel mission).

1.2.3. ESA AND EUMETSAT CONTRIBUTIONS

The final two presentations, by ESA and EUMETSAT, reviewed the respective contributions of the two agencies to the monitoring of polar zones and snow covered areas.

EUMETSAT presented the range of products available or expected from their Satellite Application Facilities, of relevance for polar and snow monitoring and reviewed the range of instruments planned on the next generation of their polar orbiting and geostationary satellites. EUMETSAT believes that the analysis of future missions shall be an open process where many actors can feed in their ideas and contributions, and synergy between the Sentinels and the contributing missions shall become a priority for a future optimisation of Copernicus infrastructure. In this process, issues such as optimisation of existing instruments and definition of optimal orbit plans maximising the



number of observations should be considered. For EUMETSAT, future Copernicus missions shall be operated in maximum synergy with the ground segment infrastructure developed for the current Sentinels. Finally, EUMETSAT emphasised the importance of highly elliptical orbit (HEO) missions, as a complement to the current and future meteorological missions, underlined the geo-strategic importance of the observation of the poles.

ESA, leveraging on the current experimental missions (CryoSat-2, SMOS), listed and discussed several mission concepts which could meet the most relevant requirements (the majority of which have been endorsed by all participants to the workshop) and these include:

Polar ice and ocean topography mission (enhanced continuity of CryoSat) with dual-frequency SAR Interferometric (SARin) altimetry, supporting also snow observations

Polar imaging from HEO: synergistic mission relevant to EU Arctic Policy needs (mobile communications and Earth Observation) to fill gap left by GEO missions, as proposed by several operational actors in weather and climate

Low frequency passive radiometry mission for polar and snow applications (enhanced continuity of SMOS)

Automated high-resolution NRT ice charting from a multi-frequency SAR constellation, incrementally deployed building on Sentinels and contributing missions (including possibly commercial ones)

Mass transport from space gravimetry to directly measure ice mass change, ice flow dynamics, etc.



1.3. CONCLUSIONS

Polar Regions are recognised as being of great importance for many sectors (e.g. transport, security…). Existing satellites and emerging satellites capabilities demonstrated that key observations of these regions can be obtained from space.

Nevertheless, key stakeholders seem to concur in estimating that Polar regions have not been given the right level of attention in the Copernicus framework, notwithstanding the long experience with ERS and Envisat, the continued support by ESA for more than 30 years to polar studies and initiatives, the success of experimental missions like CryoSat-2 and SMOS. The operational products mainly come from meteorological satellites and Copernicus missions not explicitly designed with these objectives in mind. It is widely assumed that the use of data from meteorological missions will continue and improve in polar areas, albeit with a gap for high-revisit NRT imagery.

The development of a highly elliptical orbit (HEO) mission in complement to the meteorological programmes would provide unique benefits to the users. Interesting and useful products are already delivered, in a quasi-operational form, by the Copernicus marine service and by EUMETSAT Satellite Applications Facilities (SAFs), but those are by far not satisfactory. It is therefore not surprising that most of the requirements are well consolidated and did not evolve in the nearest past, backed up by scientists and by operational organisations. It is clear that an operational enhanced continuity should be provided after CryoSat, but also to several measurements performed by SMOS. Multi-band radar measurements would improve operational services. A better coverage should be achieved, possibly with dedicated orbits such as the HEO concept developed for polar communications. Spatial resolution should be improved in several domains and temporal resolution in nearly all of them. Freezing and thawing should be monitored better than they are today, for climate monitoring and for industry operations. Ice mass changes over land should be better estimated.

The user community also still has to rely on sufficiently frequent observations which have to be available on a daily basis (e.g. for automatic sea ice chart production or production of other similarly useful products for the safety of navigation, including high resolution near real time sea ice thickness, sea ice drift and iceberg detection). In addition, timeliness of the delivery of products for operational use as well as their adequacy to the objectives should be improved: delays are often unacceptable (ice breakers, navigation, infrastructure building, search-and-rescue support, etc.).

Moreover, Copernicus has to rely on a strong in situ observation capability which has to be used for operational modelling. In this context, the reduced availability of critical in situ networks is another source of concern: polar zones require an integrated view and the question of an integrated polar service has been raised.

Similar considerations have somehow emerged from the presentations and the discussion about the monitoring of snow covered areas. The list of products requested is quite clear (see presentations by Dr Nagler and Dr Notarnicola) and there is a consensus about their characteristics. The importance of measuring snow parameters is evident in several areas (climate, hydrology, hazards, etc.). Yet only a subset of the desired products is currently available operationally and often without the desired accuracy and spatial or temporal resolutions. The critical situation of in situ measurements has also been stressed by several speakers.

A multi-mission approach has been identified as being suitable to address a large number of needs for both Polar Regions and snow cover monitoring.

Finally, it was generally felt that the workshop discussions had well managed to capture user needs with respect to the range of users present. Nevertheless, some attendees emphasized that attention should still be paid to user needs arising from societal related challenges in the Arctic, which were not identified during the workshop, and should be part of any further follow-on events with users.



2ANNEX 1 WORKSHOP AGENDA Venue:

Breydel building Auditorium

45, avenue d'Auderghem-1049 Brussels

Programme outline:

9:00 Registration

9:30 DG GROW – Peter Breger, Deputy Head of the Copernicus Unit - Welcome

9:35 NEXTSPACE – Udrivolf Pica – Context and objectives of the workshop

9:40 ECMWF – Vincent-Henri Peuch - Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) contribution to Polar regions & Snow Cover monitoring

10:00 Mercator Océan – Dr Gilles Garric - Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) and Polar regions monitoring

10:15 University of Leeds (UK)- Prof Andrew Shepherd –Achievements of the CryoSat mission and needs for the future

10:35 NERSC (Norway) – Dr Johnny A. Johannessen –Synergetic use of satellite and in situ data for Polar Ocean monitoring: what is needed?

11:00 Coffee break

11:20 Polar View - David Arthurs –Polaris’ gap analysis summary

11:40 User Panel Discussion (Polar regions monitoring user requirements)

12:45 Lunch

14:00 ENVEO (Austria) – Dr Thomas Nagler – Snow Cover applications: major gaps in current EO measurement capabilities

14:15 EURAC (Italy) – Dr Claudia Notarnicola - Glaciers, Snow and Hazards: current EO limitations and user needs for the future

14:30 University of Salzburg – Dr Sebastian d'Oleire-Oltmanns - Polar and Snow cover: cross-cutting needs

14:45 User Panel Discussion (Snow Cover applications user requirements)

15:45 Coffee break

16:10 ESA – Pierluigi Silvestrin - Polar regions and Snow Cover monitoring from Space: state-of-the-art capabilities and mission concepts

16:30 EUMETSAT – Dr Kenneth Holmlund - EUMETSAT’s view on future Ice, Snow, and Permafrost observations

16:50 Final discussion, key messages and concluding remarks

17:30 End of meeting



3ANNEX 2 LIST OF WORKSHOP ATTENDANTS Table 3-1: List of actual Workshop attendants

Surname Name Affiliation

1 Appel Florian VISTA GmbH

2 Arthurs David Polar View

3 Baillion Yvan Thales Alenia Space

4 Bamps Catharina EC/DG GROW

5 Bequignon Jerome ESA

6 Bouillon Sylvain NERSC

7 Bruzzi Stefano SpaceTec

8 Burgueno Arjona Augusto EC/DG CNECT

9 Casson David UNESCO-IHE

10 caussemille sophie Airbus Defence and Space

11 Cheek Joseph Arctic Portal

12 Crochet Tom FDC

13 De Witte Erik ESA

14 Debien Annekatrien Consultant

15 Deligny Bernard Thales Alenia Space

16 Dobricic Srdjan EC/DG JRC

17 d'Oleire-Oltmanns Sebastian University of Salzburg

18 Fernandez Vicente EuroGOOS AISBL

19 Forsberg Rene DTU Space

20 Gambardella Attilio EC/DG RTD

21 Garric Gilles Mercator Océan

22 Geist Thomas FFG

23 Grabak Ola ESA

24 Grabak Ola ESA

25 Grundemann Gaby UNESCO-IHE

26 Gullne Ulf Swedish Maritime Administration

27 Holmlund Kenneth EUMETSAT

28 Humbert Angelika Alfred Wegener Institute



29 Jackisch Dominik EC/DG AGRI

30 Jeansou Eric NOVELTIS

31 Jindrova Marketa Gisat

32 Johannessen Johnny A. Nansen Center

33 Jutz Simon ESA/ESRIN

34 Kern Michael ESA-ESTEC

35 Klein Thomas Stefan swedish agency for marine and

water management

36 Lambin Juliette CNES

37 Lhermitte Stef KULeuven

38 Lonar Barth Vigdis Norwegian Space Centre

39 Martinez Cristina EC/DG CNECT

40 Mengistu Tamirat Addis Ababa education...

41 Menking Christina Airbus Group

42 Mercier Franck CLS

43 Mitu Nicolae EC/DG GROW

44 Nagler Thomas ENVEO

45 Nilsson Stefan SMHI

46 Notarnicola Claudia EURAC

47 Nyenhuis Michael DLR Space Administration

48 Ourevitch Stephane SpaceTec

49 Parrinello Tommaso ESA

50 Peuch Vincent-Henri ECMWF

51 Pica Udrivolf SpaceTec Partners

52 Pircher Vincent Ministry of Environment, Energy,

and Climate Change

53 Qvistgaard Keld International Ice Charting

Working Group

54 Ramos F. EC/DG CLIMA (Intern)

55 Schyberg Harald Norwegian Meteorological Institute



56 Shepherd Andrew University of Leeds

57 Silvestrin Pierluigi ESA

58 Small David University of Zurich

59 Solberg Rune Norwegian Computing Center

60 Sousa Ana European Environment Agency

61 Spreen Gunnar University of Bremen

62 Strahlendorff Mikko Finnish Meteorological Institute

63 svara carlo Thales Alenia Space Italia S.p.A

64 Te Hennepe Frank OHB System AG

65 Toulekki Constantina EC/DG GROW (trainee)

66 Turpin Julien European Commission

67 Urpalainen-

Menon

Kristiina REA / European Commission

68 Vera Castillo Jorge Missions permanentes auprès de l'Organisation des Nations Unies

69 Wouters Bert University of Utrecht

70 Zuber Andre EC/DG ENV

report copernicus polar and snow cover applications … · 2019-07-25 · commerce, water...

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