FIRST RESULTS FROM THE CRYOCLIM SYSTEM FOR CRYOSPHERIC CLIMATE MONITORING Rune Solberg (1) , Bjørn Wangensteen (1) , Thor Kristoffersen (1) , Mari Anne Killie (2) , Lars-Anders Breivik (2) , Øystein Godøy (2) , Heiko Klein (2) , Steinar Eastwood (2) , Liss Marie Andreassen (3) , Solveig H. Winsvold (3) , Max König (4) (1) Norwegian Computing Center (NR), P.O. Box 114 Blindern, NO-0314 Oslo, Norway, Email: rune.solberg@nr.no (2) Norwegian Meteorological Institute, P.O. Box 43 Blindern, NO-0313 Oslo, Email: mari.a.killie@met.no (3) Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, P.O. Box 5091 Majorstua, NO-0301 Oslo, Email: lma@nve.no (4) Norwegian Polar Institute, NO-9296 Tromsø, Email: max.koenig@npolar.no ABSTRACT The vision of the CryoClim initiative is to develop new operational services for long-term systematic climate monitoring of the cryosphere. The project develops services for sea ice and snow products of global coverage and glacier products covering Norway (mainland and Svalbard). The envisioned system will be provided as a web service based on state-of-the-art principles for spatial data. The system and services is designed to be integrated with the international system of systems for global monitoring (GEOSS) – the part of the system aimed for climate monitoring. At this stage the project has developed the first (incomplete) version of the web service, completed the sub-service for sea ice, developed the passive microwave component of the snow sub-service, made the first full glacier product coverage for mainland Norway based on optical data and validate SAR-based algorithms for glacier monitoring in Svalbard. The upcoming two project phases will complete the sub-services, produce the full time series of cryospheric products and establish fully operational production to regularly update the product sets. The web service will be completed with an operational backend system and a web service with a portal and machine-readable interfaces. 1. INTRODUCTION Air temperature measurements show a clear trend of global climate warming during the last decades. The Arctic temperature has increased at almost twice the rate compared to that of the rest of the world over the same period [1]. It has been generally agreed internationally that climate monitoring is urgently needed in order to quantify and better understand the climatic changes taking place [2]. Therefore, climate monitoring has been put at the top of the agenda by the UN and in the international Earth observation initiatives GEO and GMES. This is further emphasised in article 4.1(g) of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) where all parties agree, to "Promote and cooperate in scientific, technological, technical, socio-economic and other research, systematic observation and development of data archives related to the climate system and intended to further the understanding and to reduce or eliminate the remaining uncertainties regarding the causes, effects, magnitude and timing of climate change and the economic and social consequences of various response strategies". The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) – established in 1992 to ensure that the observations needed to address climate-related issues are obtained and made available to all potential users – is now the recognized mechanism to facilitate the implementation of UNFCCC commitments. GCOS has established a list of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) that are both feasible and have a high impact on the UNFCCC requirements. In 2006, GCOS issued the document “Systematic Observation Requirements for Satellite- based Products for Climate” detailing the satellite-based component of the GCOS implementation plan [3]. Recognising the needs of climate monitoring as stated by UNFCCC and the implementation plan provided by GCOS, the project CryoClim was initiated in 2008. The CryoClim initiative was proposed by a group of Norwegian organisations: Norwegian Computing Center (NR), Norwegian Meteorological Institute (METNO), Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) and Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI). Phase 1 and 2 of the project has been carried out as an ESA PRODEX project supported by the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC). The vision of the CryoClim initiative is to develop new operational services for long-term systematic climate monitoring of the cryosphere. The system and services is designed to be integrated into the planned international system of systems for global monitoring (GEOSS) – the part of the system aimed for climate monitoring. Based on scientific and technological results from several past and current projects, it develops a network-based system building on standards and communication languages identified by GMES and Proceedings of ESA Living Planet Symposium, 28 June to 2 July 2010, Bergen, Norway