Recent Advances and Challenges of Monitoring Climate Change from Space - Satellite-based Applications on Climate Change - page 349

validation play a pivotal role relative to understanding the climate and its trends—
an important issue. The applications of satellite data for climate change are
summarized based on the 20 chapters in this topic, and recent advances of climate
change monitoring from space are discussed. Monitoring climate change from
space presents major challenges that will be briefly summarized. The era of
collecting satellite images from space is rapidly being replaced by the era of
“Satellite Climatology” as the time series of satellite measurements has reached
over 30 years of extended applications and use.

21.1 Introduction

Monitoring climate change from space is one of most important and challenging
responsibilities. Satellite remote sensing measurements can make the task of moni-
toring the entire Earth relatively easy with low costs. Satellite measurements
provide the ability to observe and predict the Earth's environment and weather
more reliably. Accurate, reliable, and consistent measurements frommultiple satellite
sensors are critical for weather prediction and climate change studies. However, each
satellite instrument has different spectral, spatial, and temporal specifications
and is usually calibrated separately with different methodologies. There is often
bias between different satellite measurements which will impact trend assessments
and induce errors if not corrected. Satellite observations make a significant contri-
bution to the Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) and their associated data sets and
products of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) which was established
to ensure that all users have access to the climate observations, data records,
and information which they require to address pressing climate-related concerns.
The recent advances and challenges of monitoring climate change with multi-
instrument measurements from space will be discussed. The state of the art of
collecting satellite images from space is rapidly being replaced by the era of “Satellite
Climatology” as the time series of satellite measurements has reached over 30 years
of extended applications and use. A discussion of recent satellite application
advances from the previous 20 chapters will be summarized.

21.2 Summary of This Topic

The summary of the previous 20 chapters includes different climate zones including
the tropical, middle-latitude, high-latitude, and Arctic climates. This topic was
organized in four sections: (1) overview of satellite-based measurements and
applications, (2) atmospheric and climate applications, (3) hydrological and
cryospheric applications, and (4) land surface and ecological applications. Because
the long-term climate monitoring system from space is very complex, only a small but
important subset of satellite progress was presented. In Chap. 1 , an introduction to
satellite-based applications and research for understanding climate change is given by
the topic editors (Powell et al. 2013 ). The background information highlights the early