Long-term River Discharge from Space
Satellite-based approaches offer a unique opportunity to fill this gap, enabling spatially consistent, long-term monitoring of river discharge across different hydrological and climatic regions. In this context, the ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Discharge precursor project aims to develop long-term, homogeneous satellite-derived river discharge data sets covering more than two decades, designed to support large-scale climate studies, hydrological models and assessments. Ensuring that these data sets meet user needs, are scientifically robust and fit for purpose requires close interaction between data developers and the user community.
This Townhall meeting is organised as a workshop for users of the CCI Discharge precursor project. Its main objective is to bring together current and potential users of long-term satellite data on river flow to share information on approaches to developing datasets, discuss strengths and limitations, and explore potential applications. The meeting will provide an overview of CCI Discharge products, including the satellite observations used, methodological frameworks, uncertainty characterisation and data access, avoiding duplication with the scientific sessions.
The target audience includes hydrologists, climate scientists, Earth observation specialists, modellers, and professionals interested in long-term runoff time series for applications such as climate variability and change analysis, trend detection, model benchmarking, data assimilation, and global or continental-scale hydrological studies. The public meeting is also relevant for users working in regions with poor data availability, where satellite-derived discharge products can provide complementary information that is critical to sparse ground-based networks.
The expected outcomes of the meeting include increased awareness of the CCI Discharge precursor datasets, a better understanding of their appropriate use and limitations, and the collection of structured feedback from users on data requirements, usability and future developments. This feedback will directly influence current and future phases of the CCI Discharge precursor project, supporting the co-design of satellite products related to river discharges and promoting their adoption by the wider hydrological and climate research communities.
The oral presentations are given in a hybrid format supported by a Zoom meeting featuring on-site and virtual presentations. The button to access the Zoom meeting appears just before the time block starts.