EOCIS seeks to make a national contribution of value worldwide to the information available about climate, which will have both direct and indirect scientific impact. All EOCIS data will be freely available to the world.
Posted: May 2023
You may have heard about the Earth Observation Climate Information Service (EOCIS) but what is it? And how does it fit into the UK’s climate data from space landscape?
EOCIS was launched in March, bringing together a high-profile consortium of UK research institutions, including 10 universities. Led by two Space4Climate Board Members – Professor John Remedios, Director of the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), as the Investment Lead, and Professor Chris Merchant of NCEO and the University of Reading as the Science Lead, EOCIS is funded by the UK Government through the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Chris said at the launch: “EOCIS has as its overall mission to contribute positively to UK and international responses to the challenge of climate change. This means the project targets commerce and policy as well as excellent science. The strategy is to support UK Earth Observations teams that have international reputations for high quality data and methods, and to be collaborative with and complementary to other climate information services – both in the UK , such as the Met Office, and internationally, such as EUMETSAT activities and Copernicus services. A key aspect is to maximise the usability of research results, making them accessible via Geographic Information System interfaces, interoperable across variables, etc.”
EOCIS is part of the UK’s response to changes in its involvement in the European-led Copernicus Climate Change Service, ensuring the continuation of, and UK access to, high-quality, trustworthy and – importantly – actionable climate data from space.
What will EOCIS do?
EOCIS seeks to make a national contribution of value worldwide to the information available about climate, which will have both direct and indirect scientific impact. All EOCIS data will be freely available to the world.
It will engage the commercial sector, particularly through actionable information projects, which are an opportunity for ideation as a basis for developing new climate services. EOCIS also aims to embed the use of Earth Observation-based climate information more firmly in decision-making, again through actionable information projects building on the high-quality, trustworthy climate data that is the foundation of EOCIS’s capability.
The global and regional dataset activities of EOCIS include continuity for users of the routine production of interim climate data records. Many were previously maintained and evolved within Copernicus services, and all have a history in R&D that was nationally funded and/or developed within the ESA Climate Change Initiative. EOCIS activities will upgrade and improve timeliness of many of these global and regional datasets.
Chris says: “EOCIS will focus on some of the existing global climate datasets and will also create new forms of climate information specifically for the UK and surrounding areas at high spatial resolution. Here, information is a broader concept than data: climate data records are included, but additional more contextualized derivatives of data are an important part of this element.
“The core of EOCIS is data and information, and many science advances will be made outside the project using EOCIS outputs. However, there are four, timely, applied science use cases within EOCIS.”
The global datasets that will be generated by EOCIS include atmospheric, land surface and ocean essential climate variables.
The regional datasets include high latitude observables, methane observations in the lower atmosphere and observations of soil water balance across Africa. These are chosen to be of prime scientific importance and/or of relevance to important societal concerns such as food security in a changing climate.
These climate variables and indices will be generated for the UK at high resolution, generally ~100m resolution.
- Fire detection and urban flooding activities will target near-real time generation of information related to fire and flood events in the UK that may have a climate change aspect to their incidence.
- Surface temperature activity will create integrated, all-surface information of spatial variability of surface temperature across the UK.
- Coastal water colour is in part affected by rain-runoff effects, interacting with the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall.
- Ecosystem and human health are addressed by vegetation, lake change and aerosol activities.
Is EOCIS connected to the new EO Data Hub?
EOCIS will run in parallel to a second major digital infrastructure development called the EO Data Hub, also being led by NCEO and run by the Jasmin/CEDA supercomputer team. EOCIS will exploit developments within the EO Data Hub project to give enhanced opportunities to access and interact with EOCIS datasets. The EO Data Hub project will underpin the infrastructure for EOCIS and will implement capable, integrated facilities for users to access and interact with data from EOCIS and beyond. Bringing datasets together to create insight is a priority for both projects.
Additional activities will be launched that enable EOCIS partners to work beyond the consortium to engage with climate information users more closely. These activities will be fully funded and will lead to new forms of climate information that can give insight and be embedded in commercial or policy practices.
What is Space4Climate’s role?
The role of Space4Climate will be to connect the space-enabled climate technology community to EOCIS to drive take-up of the new, accessible data for development of innovative climate services and products.
Donna Lyndsay, Vice-Chair of Space4Climate and Strategic Market Lead at Ordnance Survey, said at the launch that Space4Climate will provide an ‘invaluable network of industry connections’ for EOCIS, increasing the commercial value of the project.
Space4Climate will also sit on the EOCIS steering group.
At the launch, Hannah Keen, Head of EO Policy in the Space Directorate of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), highlighted that EOCIS will help to meet the UK EO strategic priorities. Paul Monks, Chief Scientific Adviser of the Department for Energy Security and Net-Zero, said EOCIS will help the UK to achieve Net Zero, stressing the importance of ensuring that policy decisions are underpinned by science, and the value of the information EOCIS will provide.
How can I get involved?
Your commercial organisation does not need to be a member of Space4Climate to get involved, if you want to stay in touch with opportunities, please email our Climate Services Development Manager, Krupa Nanda Kumar, k.nandakumar@reading.ac.uk
If you want to hear more about the climate data progress of EOCIS, please contact Prof Chris Merchant, c.j.merchant@reading.ac.uk.