CoAuthors

Simis Stefan (PML, United Kingdom); Calmettes Beatriz (CLS, France); Merchant Chris (Universty of Reading, Unit Kingdom); Duguay Claude (H2O Geomatics, Canada); Giardino Claudia (CNR, Italy); Coulon Bruno (CLS, France); Hervé Yesou (SERTIT, France); Eirik Malnes (NORUT, Norway); Pablo Blanco (TRE-ALTAMIRA, Spain)

Lakes and enclosed inland seas are integrators of environmental, anthropogenic and climatic changes occurring within their catchments. The factors that drive lake conditions vary widely across space and time, and lakes, in turn, impact their surrounding environments in important and diverse ways. Remote sensing can offer unique insights into the response of lakes to change, at a global level. The ESA Climate Change Initiative Lakes (CCI-Lakes) project will provide the first consistent dataset of essential climate variables for a global selection of lakes, in response to the updated GCOS definition of the Lakes ECV (GCOS 2016). This is a multi-disciplinary task combining expertise in the remote observation of lake water level, lake water extent, ice cover, surface water temperature and surface water reflectance. It is crucial to reach consistency between the individual variables, which are observable at varying spatial resolutions and temporal intervals, and available from sensor records which do not always overlap in time. The CCI Lakes project, however, also presents an opportunity for limnologists and climate modellers worldwide to evaluate and contribute to the first attempt to combine state-of-the-art remote sensing methods for these variables. The CCI Lakes team is currently preparing the first climate data record based on current satellite sensor capabilities