Copernicus Global Land Service Quality Assessment – Better Good Than Sorry!

The Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS) ensures operational monitoring of the continental ecosystems through the provision of global terrestrial geophysical variables. The CGLS portfolio covers several satellite-based land products at different spatial and temporal resolution related to energy, vegetation, water, and cryosphere. Before delivering the products to the users a quality assessment is conducted to assure that the products meet the user requirements and to inform the users on the quality, uncertainties and limitations attached to them. The exhaustive quality assessment follows international validation good practices guidelines over an evaluation period (typically 2 years) and is complemented by an operational quality evaluation of the latest delivered products. This paper describes the overall strategy and criteria used to perform the quality assessment of the CGLS land vegetation and water products to reach the highest level of validation and hence confidence in the quality of the CGLS products.