15.11.2019 Data Science Forum: Cold humid islands: remote sensing observatory for understanding climate mitigation

by Fred Worrall (Earth Sciences)

Friday 15 Nov 2019, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/London

218 (OC)

I propose that Earth Observation (EO) and remote sensing has focused on ever new observation techniques but has lacked attention to its application. Every day both NASA and ESA are collecting a range of data for every part of the globe and they have been doing so since 2000. These data should be relevant for understanding climate change and more importantly for identifying means of mitigating climate change, however, a number of barriers exist for the actual application. The problems with this data include: the data is in the wrong units; the wrong spatial coordinates are used; the data represent the wrong endpoints;  data is not calibrated; and data has no control. The project proposes that with relatively simple high throughput computing it would be possible to remove multiple barriers to the use of EO data and create a remote sensing observatory. Once we have a remote sensing observatory (a data cube) it will be possible to identifying climate mitigation strategies and the example of peatland restoration (the cold humid island) will be shown.