Climate Data Records from environmental satellites

1. INTRODUCTION At the dawn of the twenty-first century, NOAA's mission includes a bold new mandate to "understand climate variability and change to enhance society's ability to plan and respond." An integral component of NOAA's emphasis on climate involves creating a stewardship plan to generate, analyze, and archive long-term satellite climate data records (CDRs) that assess the state of the environment. Although the concept of a "climate data record" has surfaced numerous times in recent literature, the climate community has yet to agree on a consistent definition. For this report, a climate data record is defined as "a time series of measurements of sufficient length, consistency, and continuity to determine climate variability and change." We further segment satellite-based CDRs into two types: The first, fundamental CDRs (FCDRs), are calibrated and quality-controlled sensor data that have been improved over time, and the second, thematic CDRs (TCDRs), are geophysical variables derived from the FCDRs, such as sea surface temperature and cloud fraction.