Towards an enhanced climate system monitoring: challenges and perspectives

Climate system monitoring is more involved than just launching a new satellite and tracking the ensuing data. The most valuable data are those needed to observe essential climate variables. The data also need to go through a well-defined process, transforming the raw data into climate data records to help ensure that the information derived from these records accurately depicts how the climate is changing. A key aspect of any strategy for improving global climate system monitoring is enhancing the international exchange of climate data. The benefit of this often becomes clear as meteorological services in countries around the world improve the climate information they provide by putting it in the context of larger scale, cross-border climate signals.