Updates of Fire and Groundwater assessment on standards now available

11 April 2008

Dear Colleagues,

Please be informed that updated working draft on the assessment of available standards for the fire and ground water terrestrial Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) are now available at the following links:

Fire: www.fao.org/gtos/ECV-T13.html

Groundwater: www.fao.org/gtos/ECV-T03.html

The work being undertaken is in response to the UNFCCC request made to GTOS to undertake an assessment of the status of the development of standards for each of the essential climate variables in the terrestrial domain. This is due to the fact that the lack of standardization of methods used to gather and process environmental data is a major barrier in data harmonization and use by the user stakeholder community.

You are encouraged to review current drafts and provide additional information (especially of methodologies, protocols and procedures) which has been omitted so that a complete prospective is provided to the UNFCCC.

Once the full analysis for each terrestrial ECV has been undertaken the material will be used to develop reports which will be presented to UNFCCC SBSTA 29, December 2008, in which issues regarding systematic observations will be discussed.


Best regards,

GTOS Secretariat

Please feel free to send notices that you would like GTOS to disseminate to GTOS@fao.org

© FAO   ::   Global Terrestrial Observing System - GTOS   ::  11 April 2008