The Copernicus Programme and its Climate Change Service

This paper provides an overview of the European Union's Earth Observation Programme, Copernicus, dedicated at monitoring the planet Earth and its environment for the benefit of all European citizens. The Programme offers information services based on satellite Earth Observation, in situ (non-space), and modelling data. The paper focuses on one of the six Copernicus Services, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which provides comprehensive climate information covering a wide range of components of the Earth-system (atmosphere, land, ocean, sea-ice and carbon), maximising the use of past, current and future earth observations (from in-situ and satellite observing systems) in conjunction with modelling, supercomputing and networking capabilities to produce a consistent, comprehensive and credible description of the past, current and future climate, via the generation of a large number of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs).