Satellites orbiting Earth will soon beam down a steady stream of real-time data on greenhouse gases, wildfires, ocean temperatures, and air pollution, all coordinated through a single national service. The UK currently produces world-class Earth observation data, but it is scattered across different research groups and often arrives too slowly for policymakers or businesses to act on it. This project, the UK Earth-observation Climate Information Service (UKEO-CIS), brings together scientists from across the country to fix that. It will standardise and speed up the data pipeline, making climate information timely, accessible, and usable. The service will cover the entire globe, with special focus on the Arctic, Africa, and Antarctica—regions critical for understanding sea-level rise and food security—and will also produce high-resolution, multi-layered data for the UK itself. If successful, UKEO-CIS will become a practical tool for government adaptation planning, net-zero strategies, and commercial services that need reliable climate intelligence. It will also support fundamental science, enabling researchers to test new models of climate resilience with data that was previously too fragmented to use.
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Earth observation from space is the use of sensors on satellites orbiting the Earth to measure the state of the planet. Many important aspects of the Earth's varied environments can be deduced from the satellite measurements. Examples include greenhouse gases, temperature, plants on land and in the sea, fire and its effects, and particulates in the air. The UK has a world-class reputation and capability in measuring these and other environmental factors by Earth observation. In this project, many scientists across the UK will be brought together in a national effort to generate timely information about the environment focussing on aspects relevant to climate. This means not only tracking changes in climate, but also information relevant to working towards "net zero", other ideas for adapting to climate change, and factors affecting health and well-being that interact with climate. The project will establish a UK Earth-observation Climate Information Service (UKEO CIS), which will efficiently measure the environment from space in a timely manner, improve the quality of the data being generated, and bring data together to make these as accessible as possible to all users. The data will be used for scientific studies, to support policy and decision making, and in the commercial world for services to businesses that need climate information. Throughout the project, scientists will engage with all these groups of users to work together on achieving the maximum benefit from the UKEO CIS. Most of the data about the climate that UKEO CIS will generate will be global, taking advantage of the worldwide view obtainable from space. Some focus on regions of critical interest for the UK -- the Arctic, Africa and Antarctic. These regions are relevant to understanding climate risks such as sea level rise, greenhouse gases in the environment, and food security. A new focus of the UKEO CIS will be data targeting the UK in greater detail with many 'layers' of information being able to be brought readily together. This will be a new resource for science, policy making and business. Finally, some of the newer forms of data will exploited in innovative studies to demonstrate the scientific progress that can be made with them to bring deeper insight and predictability into climate resilience.
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