About

EUSTACE (EU Surface Temperature for All Corners of Earth) gives publicly available daily estimates of surface air temperature since 1850 across the globe for the first time by combining surface and satellite data using novel statistical techniques.

Why EUSTACE?

Day-to-day variations in surface air temperature affect society in many ways:

Health and well-being: it can cause cold stress or heat stress
Food security: link between surface air temperature and crop growth and animal health
Energy: influence on the demand for heating or cooling, high temperature compromise the efficiency of solar panels
Commerce: it affects the sales of a large variety of products
Tourism: it affects the attractiveness of a region, risk of bush fires
Infrastructure: extremes affect the functioning of bridges, railways

However, daily surface air temperature measurements are not available everywhere. Satellite data can be used to estimate temperatures at locations where no ground (or in situ) observations are available. To achieve this, we developped an understanding of the relationships between traditional (land and marine) surface air temperature measurements and satellite measurements, i.e. land surface temperature, ice surface temperature, sea surface temperature and lake surface water temperature. These relationships were derived either empirically, or with the help of physical understanding.

How did EUSTACE achieve this?

The EUSTACE project used new statistical techniques to provide information on higher spatial and temporal scales than available before, making optimum use of the information in data-rich eras. EUSTACE undertook this work between January 2015 and March 2019. The final and intermediate products of EUSTACE (e.g. satellite skin temperature retirevals over all domains with consistent uncertainty estimates; station time series with discontinuities identified; information on the relationship between skin and air temperature over different domains and different seasons) will be interesting for many applications.

EUSTACE has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme for Research and Innovation, under Grant Agreement no 640171.