ESA Cloud Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Dataset Collection

This dataset collection contains cloud products produced by the Cloud project within the ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI).

The ultimate objective of the ESA Cloud Climate Change Initiative (Cloud_cci) project is to provide long-term coherent cloud property datasets exploiting the synergic capabilities of different Earth observation missions allowing for improved accuracies and enhanced temporal and spatial sampling better than those provided by the single sources.

CC4CL (Community Cloud Retrieval for Climate) and FAME-C (Freie Universität Berlin AATSR MERIS Cloud) are optimal estimation based retrieval systems providing GCOS cloud property Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) including uncertainty estimates. These global datasets contain cloud fraction, cloud top level estimates (pressure, height, and temperature), cloud thermodynamic phase, spectral cloud albedo, cloud effective radius, cloud optical thickness as well as cloud liquid and ice water content.

The AATSR-MODIS-AVHRR heritage product family obtained by CC4CL is based on measurements from ATSR-2/ERS-2, AATSR/ENVISAT, MODIS/AQUA, MODIS/TERRA, and AVHRR on-board NOAA-7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15,16, 17, 18,19, and MetOp-A. The second product family contains cloud properties derived from ENVISAT’s AATSR and MERIS observations using the synergetic retrieval system FAME-C.

In the first phase (2010 – 2013) of the Cloud_cci project prototype retrieval versions have been established leading to preliminary results covering 2007, 2008, and 2009, herein referred to as demonstrator datasets. In Phase 2 (2014 – 2016) both retrieval schemes have been substantially improved enhancing the data quality of the cloud products spanning the time period from Jan 1st 1982 to Dec 31st 2014.

Considerations for climate applications:

Due to the short period (i.e. 3 years) of the current available demonstrator datasets, it is not possible to perform long-term data comparisons or to support long-term climate analysis.

Please be aware of the fact that by the end of 2016 at the latest these prototype datasets will be replaced by the complete multi-decadal Cloud_cci climatology (1982 – 2014) together with updated Product User Guide (PUG) and Product Validation and Intercomparison Report (PVIR) documents.

We would like to stress that one of the main objectives in the second phase of the Cloud_cci project has been the further development and improvement of both retrieval schemes and their processing systems. As a consequence, the quality and accuracy of the final cloud products have been considerably improved compared to the currently available demonstrator datasets.

Date (Publication)

Date (Creation)

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/8cf12c9d19db4797a7549c74cef6c03e

Citation identifier: Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) / 8cf12c9d19db4797a7549c74cef6c03e

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Unavailable	Hollmann, Rainer	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Stengel, Martin	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Bojanowski, Jedrzej	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Carbajal Henken, Cintia	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Christensen, Matt	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Devasthale, Abhay	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Eliasson, Salomon	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Feofilov, Artem	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Fokke Meirink, Jan	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Grainger, Don	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Karlsson, Karl-Göran	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Keller, Michael	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	McGarragh, Greg	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Poulsen, Caroline A.	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Povey, Adam	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Schlundt, Cornelia	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Stapelberg, Stefan	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Stöckli, Reto	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Stubenrauch, Claudia	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Sus, Oliver	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Thomas, Gareth	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	van Meijgaard, Erik	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Willén, Ulrika	Unavailable	Author
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Custodian
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	pointofContact
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Unknown

Update scope: Series

Keywords

ESA
Cloud
CCI
ECV

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

atmospheric conditions

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Please contact the data centre for assistance on accessing data from this dataset collection.

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Under the following licence https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/licences/specific_licences/esacci_cloud_terms_and_conditions_v2.pdf, appropriate use of these data may fall under any use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.

Other constraints: Under the following licence https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/licences/specific_licences/esacci_cloud_terms_and_conditions.pdf, appropriate use of these data may fall under any use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.

Spatial representation type: Grid

Language: English

Topic category

Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Begin date: 1982-01-01T00:00:00

End date: 2016-12-31T23:59:59

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84

Distribution format

Name	Version
Contact data centre for format details.

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/8cf12c9d19db4797a7549c74cef6c03e	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://climate.esa.int/projects/cloud/	ESA CCI Cloud project website

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://climate.esa.int/	ESA Climate Change Initiative website

Hierarchy level: Series

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Statement: Please see data lineage statements for each dataset within this collection for data lineage details.

Metadata

File identifier: 8cf12c9d19db4797a7549c74cef6c03e XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Hierarchy level: Series

Hierarchy level name: series

Date stamp: 2025-12-04T03:27:08

Metadata standard name: UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version: 2.3

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Point of contact

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