Consistent Global Land Cover Maps For Climate Modelling Communities: Current Achievements Of The ESA' Land Cover CCI

Led by the European Space Agency, the Climate Change Initiative land cover project focuses on the land cover observed as an Essential Climate Variable. Consultation mechanisms were established with the climate modelling community in order to identify its specific needs in terms of satellite-based global land cover products. Key finding was the needs for stable land cover data and a dynamic component in form of time-series. An innovative land cover concept is proposed, along with an new global land cover mapping approach, based on multi-year earth observation datasets. The corresponding products are presented, which consist of three successive and consistent global LC maps centred to the epochs 2000, 2005 and 2010.