About

Established by ESA in 2008, the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) is a major science programme focused on developing global, decadal-long satellite-derived climate data records. Collectively, these data provide a major contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of the state of the climate and underpin the climate value information chain that inform effective policy, decision-making and action.

The CCI programme leverages a 40-year satellite data archive from ESA and its Member States, including current ESA missions, the Copernicus Sentinels, ESA third-party missions, and agency partners including NASA, NOAA, JAXA, and EUMETSAT. The CCI programme produces datasets for Essential Climate Variables (ECVs), critical for climate monitoring as defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to systematically monitor the Earth system. Satellite observations form the backbone of GCOS, with two-thirds of the 55 ECVs primarily measured from space. As of January 2024, the CCI has contributed to records for 27 ECVs, marking a significant impact on understanding Earth's climate system.

CCI Open Data Portal

The CCI Open Data Portal is the data management facility of the CCI programme. It offers free, open and easy access to all CCI data via a user-friendly dashboard, a faceted search interface, OpenSearch, OPeNDAP, ESGF, WMS, WCS, HTTPS and FTP. The facility also forms part of the CEOS Federated Earth Observation Gateway (FedEO) and the ESA Data Discovery Portal.