USER INTERACTION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF ESA DUE PERMAFROST: A CIRCUM- POLA R REMOTE SENSING SERVICE FOR PERMAFROST

ABSTRACT Permafrost has been addressed as one of the Essential Climate Variables (ECV’s) in the Global Climate Ob-serving System (GCOS). The objective of the Data User Element (DUE) Permafrost project funded by the Euro-pean Space Agency (ESA) was to establish a perma-frost-related monitoring system based on satellite data. The international permafrost research community re-quires permafrost-related end-products that are valid for high-latitude landscapes. The products are regional and circumpolar Land Surface Temperature (LST), Surface Soil Moisture (SSM), ground frozen/ non frozen state, terrain parameters, Land Cover, and surface waters. Climate and permafrost modelers as well as field inves-tigators are associated users including the International Permafrost Association (IPA). This paper provides de-tail on the user interaction, how the products were eval-uated using data of the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P) and how remote sensing shall pro-vide information on the current state of permafrost and add value to the existing ground-monitoring networks and model-based approaches.