Welcome to the first week of this course

Welcome to the introduction week of this online course. In this week, you will get to know some highlights of ESA’s Climate Change Initiative contributions to the research of climate change. You will furthermore learn to retrieve, visualise and interpret essential climate variables that are publicly available from the open data portal of the climate change initiative.

This week contains articles, which highlight the importance of a variety of essential climate variables that characterise the climate and capture its interaction with the atmosphere, land and ocean and underline the importance of measuring these ECVs from space.

We hope that this introductory will inspire you to learn further and follow the other weeks of this online course and take further advantage of the work of the Climate Change Initiative Programme.

What will you learn?

After finishing this week, you’ll have a better understanding of the following:

• Climate and climate change
• The main cycles controlling the weather and the climate
• The role of essential climate variables in characterising the climate
• The role of satellites and the Climate Change Initiative in providing global views of essential climate variables

During this introductory part we’ll cover several topics:

• Climate and climate change
• Main cycles controlling weather and climate
• Essential climate variables
• Climate Analysis Toolbox for ESA (CATE) for visualising and manipulating satellite-derived essential climate variables

We encourage you to exchange your thoughts, ideas, and problems you encounter on the forum and hope you’ll learn a lot.

Up next

In the following discussion, you will have the opportunity to introduce yourself and reflect on the climate in your region.