The globcarbon initiative: Multi-sensor estimation of global biophysical products for global terrestrial carbon studies

Understanding the spatial and temporal variation in carbon fluxes is essential to constrain models that predict climate change. However, our current knowledge of spatial and temporal patterns is uncertain, particularly over land. The ESA GLOBCARBON project aims to generate fully calibrated estimates of at-land products quasi-independent of the original Earth Observation source for use in Dynamic Global Vegetation Models, a central component of the IGBP-IHDP-WCRP Global Carbon Cycle Joint Project. The service will feature global estimates of: burned area, fApAR, LAI and vegetation growth cycle. The demonstrator will focus on ten complete years, from 1998 to 2007 when overlap exists between ESA Earth Observation sensors (ATSR-2, AATSR and MERIS) and VEGETATION. This paper presents the status of the GLOBCARBON project. It features discussion of operational solutions to the problems of handling terabytes of coarse resolution Earth observation data and converting these data into biophysical products. Examples of GLOBCARBON estimates of leaf area index, fAPAR and burned area estimation are provided.