UKEOF Guidance Note 1: ECVs - sources of information on GCOS requirements and international standards relevant to climate observing.

Abstract

The GCOS Implementation Plan provides a programme of recommendations actions over a 5 year period to assist countries in understanding, predicting, and managing their response to climate and climate change. In the GCOS implementation plan (2010 update), a set of 50 ‘Essential Climate Variables’ (ECVs) are defined. These are systematically observable variables for climate assessment, all of which are considered both technically feasible and cost-effective for systematic observation. These ECVs are needed to make significant progress in the generation of global climate products and derived information. GOSIC, the Global Observing Systems Information Centre provide overviews for each ECV that describe: ‘main climate application’, ‘contributing networks and satellite observations’, ‘issues relevant to observation and analysis’, ‘current capability’ and ‘data.’