We thought 2022 would be a quieter year for the UK Earth Observation community after the excitement of COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, but we were wrong!
With the arrival of Krupa Nanda Kumar on secondment from Board member Telespazio UK to take over as Climate Services Development Manager from Briony Turner, Space4Climate continued to be busy. Huge thanks to our Chair, Beth Greenaway, Head of Earth Observation and Climate at the UK Space Agency, Vice Chair Donna Lyndsay, Strategic Market Lead – Environment & Sustainability at Ordnance Survey, and all our Board members for their work at the forefront of Space4Climate on behalf of all our members.
Space4Climate has taken part in, organised or attended 20 Earth Observation (EO) community events this year, representing and promoting the UK climate data from space community, many of them relating to using UK EO expertise to reach Net Zero targets.
We are pleased to have played our part in raising awareness of the potential of state-of-the-art climate data from space – particularly for climate services that enable the world to fulfil the targets of the Paris Agreement and Net Zero. The level of expertise and innovation within the UK has been reflected in the national and international engagement Space4Climate and our members have achieved, including collaborations with the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA and UNOOSA, and funding in 2022.
Our aim is to plan our events calendar to balance representing our members to the whole academic, policy and private sector climate data from space community with presenting to external audiences to encourage the take up of the research and services that our members provide.
Our presence at events ranged from the National Student Space Conference organised by UKSEDS to COP27 where the Space4Climate App was the centre of attention on the PufferTouch display screen on the Department for International Trade’s stand.
We started the year with a stand at the UK Space Agency’s showcase, Space To Connect, where Paul Bate, CEO of UK Space Agency, told the conference ‘Space underpins almost every aspect of our daily lives’ and the rest of the busy year certainly underlined that!
UK EO community
Our smart pop-up stand made its debut at the UK Earth Observation Conference at the National Space Centre in Leicester in September. It was a highlight event of 2022, the first time in three years that so many UK EO colleagues were able to get together. Krupa and EO scientist Ross Maidment, from University of Reading, co-hosted an expert panel discussing climate data services and Net Zero actions in the dramatic setting of the planetarium in the National Space Centre. On our stand we featured the Space4Climate App on the eye-catching PufferTouch display which attracted conference visitors from Government agencies, industry and researchers. It was a big success and with the help of NCEO scientist Barry latter, from RAL Space, and the Pufferfish team we were able to update many of the member case studies to share on the Space4Climate App.
Our App was such a success that the Department for International trade was inspired to showcase it at COP27 where VIP visitors included Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, Defra Secretary of State Thérèse Coffey, and outgoing COP26 President, MP Alok Sharma. Even without going to Egypt Space4Climate was popular with the COP audience for the second year running.
Energy, Net Zero, transition and measuring emissions have rightly been key topics in 2022, so the Space4Climate core team exhibited at EMEX at the end of November, meeting the energy management sector face-to-face. We were joined by representatives of members, including NCEO, Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Network, NERC, Satellite Vu, GHGSat, Earth Blox and Ian Encke Consulting. It was a first event for our new core team member, Dr Shannon Jones, who joined us as Climate Services Development Technical Manager, replacing Sabrina Alam.
S4C knowledge exchange
Space4Climate also responds to needs for knowledge exchange and in 2022 we teamed up with member National Physics Laboratory (NPL) to co-present the 2nd day of their webinar ‘Delivering Climate Adaptation and Resilience: The Role of Measurement’ and IEMA (Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment) for an ‘Ask the UK Expert’ webinar on methane emissions and monitoring. It was led by Ben Goodwin, Head of Policy at IEMA, as Chair and Prof John Remedios, Director of the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) who is a Board member of Space4Climate. Links to the recording and Ben’s blog are on our website. Our members 4 Earth Intelligence represented us to showcase how EO can support air quality monitoring and services at a webinar organised by Space Enterprise Labs: Portsmouth and Durham (watch here), and Krupa delivered learning sessions for PwC.
On the international stage our Vice Chair Donna Lyndsay, Strategic Market Lead – Environment & Sustainability at Ordnance Survey, joined an event organised for the Somalian Government by our member Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD) to share how UK EO expertise can support Somalia’s climate resilience.
Working with European Space Agency
ESA’s Living Planet Symposium in Paris was the setting when our Chair, Beth, officially announced that Space4Climate had secured funding for three years from the UK Space Agency. In November there was more key funding news from the UK Government and from ESA, including for the UK-involved TRUTHS climate satellite mission and we ended the year with a call for climate services development ideas.
In between, members of the Space4Climate core team attended a calendar of events including online with Spaceport Cornwall, engaging with the built environment in-person at Futurebuild, Farnborough International Airshow, IAC Paris and Space-Comm Expo. Our Task Groups organised online workshops to share EO expertise for Net Zero strategies and we shared training and best practice case studies with members in our 8th Space4Climate Communications Workshop.
Collaboration with NASA
Our year ended with a roar as we were glued to NASA TV Live to watch the launch of the global water monitoring satellite SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) on December 16th. Our Chair, Beth Greenaway, was lucky enough to be in California for the UK Space Agency to see the SpaceX rocket take off with SWOT safely tucked inside (watch the coverage on NASA TV).
We are already looking forward to a busy 2023 and thank all our members for their support in 2022. If you want to enjoy the benefits of Space4Climate membership, find out more on our ‘Become a member’ page.
Wishing everyone a successful 2023!