Mark Dowell

• Ph.D.
• European Commission

Urban areas as major population centres are inherently exposed to high and compound climate risks, impacting across a socioeconomic, ecological, financial, and political nexus. The EU policy landscape recognises the critical importance of urban climate adaptation, as encompassed by the European Green Deal, EU Climate Adaptation Strategy, and Europe...

This study presents a methodology for the prioritization of use cases to evaluate and demonstrate the potential of an ecosystem that the European Commission (EC) is outlining through the European Regional Group on Earth Observations (EuroGEO). This ecosystem will interconnect European technologies, digital infrastructures and data, enable the imple...

The EU Climate Adaptation Strategy, European Climate Law, and European Green Deal lay down a powerful policy framework for climate adaptation in Europe. A key component of this framework is the need for fit-for-purpose adaptation monitoring, reporting, and evaluation systems, using a harmonised framework of standards and indicators. There are curre...

Gridded bottom-up inventories of CO2 emissions are needed in global CO2 inversion schemes as priors to initialize transport models and as a complement to top-down estimates to identify the anthropogenic sources. Global inversions require gridded datasets almost in near-real time that are spatially and methodologically consistent at a global scale....

The European Commission (EC), being the co-lead of the European Regional Group on Earth Observations (EuroGEO), is currently outlining an ecosystem that will interconnect European technologies, digital infrastructures and data and enable the implementation of policy-relevant use cases using shared standards. This ecosystem will in turn strengthen E...

The KCEO’s efforts in semantic Earth Observation harness machine learning techniques to link entities within and between European research, Copernicus sustained services, and policies. Documents, including research reports, papers, legislations, or descriptions are indexed using so-called embeddings – an abstract vector representation of the conten...

Gridded bottom-up inventories of CO2 emissions are needed in global CO2 inversion schemes as priors to initialize transport models, and as a complement to top-down estimates to identify the anthropogenic sources. Global inversions require gridded datasets almost in near-real time that are spatially and methodologically consistent at a global scale....

Space-based remote sensing can make an important contribution toward monitoring greenhouse gas emissions and removals from the agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) sector, and to understanding and addressing human-caused climate change through the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. Space agencies have begun to coordinate their efforts to identify...

An improved understanding of the global carbon cycle is important to the success of efforts to mitigate climate change, such as agreed in the Paris meeting of the UN Conference of the Parties in 2016. Climate change mitigation and adaptation requires action by individual countries, municipalities, cities, and their citizens. These actions require a...

The Paris Agreement of 2015 established an enhanced transparency framework, in which parties of the agreement compile and provide their national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories based on annual statistics of human activity. These are referred to as “bottom-up” estimates. However, only “top-down” atmospheric measurements can provide observation-base...

Under the Paris Agreement progress of emission reduction efforts is tracked on the basis of regular updates to national Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventories, referred to as bottom-up estimates. However, only top-down atmospheric measurements can provide observation-based evidence of emission trends. Today there is no internationally agreed, operational...

Ocean colour is recognised as an Essential Climate Variable (ECV) by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS); and spectrally-resolved water-leaving radiances (or remote-sensing reflectances) in the visible domain, and chlorophyll-a concentration are identified as required ECV products. Time series of the products at the global scale and at high...

This report was compiled by an international team of representatives from the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It outlines a high-level strategy for climate monitoring from space.

This plan describes the proposed implementation of a global observing system for climate, building on current actions. It sets out a way forward for science and technological innovations for the earth observation programmes of space agencies, and for the national implementation of climate observing systems and networks.

The Arctic is experiencing unprecedented and disproportionately high rates of environmental change due to effects of climate change. These changing conditions are making it easier to exploit the natural wealth of the Arctic (mineral, fisheries, land) while putting the existence of Arctic ecosystems and the indigenous population that rely on them un...

Here, the Climate Symposium 2014, organized by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), with support from the European Commission (EC), European Space Agency (ESA), and other agencies, took place in Darmstadt, Germany, from 13 to 17 October 2014. Around 5...

This report summarises the conclusions of discussions between climate experts and the metrology community (in this context national metrology institutes) held over two days at the National Physical Laboratory in May 2015. The objectives of the workshop and the framework for the discussions were established by leading climate experts including those...

There is a growing consensus among global policymakers to accept the conclusions of the scientific community that the Earth and its Ocean are warming, with consequences to ecosystems around the world. Satellite radiometers are one of the most important tools for measuring changes in global ocean temperatures, as well as changes in key biogeochemica...

Estimating primary production at large spatial scales is key to our understanding of the global carbon cycle. Algo-rithms to estimate primary production are well established and have been used in many studies with success. One of the key parameters in these algorithms is the chlorophyll-normalised production rate under light satura-tion (referred t...

Ocean color measured from satellites provides daily, global estimates of marine inherent optical properties (IOPs). Semi-analytical algorithms (SAAs) provide one mechanism for inverting the color of the water observed by the satellite into IOPs. While numerous SAAs exist, most are similarly constructed and few are appropriately parameterized for al...

Nearly half of the earth's photosynthetically fixed carbon derives from the oceans. To determine global and region specific rates, we rely on models that estimate marine net primary productivity (NPP) thus it is essential that these models are evaluated to determine their accuracy. Here we assessed the skill of 21 ocean color models by compari...

The performance of 36 models (22 ocean color models and 14 biogeochemical ocean circulation models (BOGCMs)) that estimate depth-integrated marine net primary productivity (NPP) was assessed by comparing their output to in situ 14C data at the Bermuda Atlantic Time series Study (BATS) and the Hawaii Ocean Time series (HOT) over nearly two decades....

1.0 ABSTRACT The purpose of the OCR-VC is to ensure a long- term, sustained record of calibrated satellite ocean colour radiances (OCR). This manuscripts describes how an informal federation of space agencies and scientists will implement,the activities required to accomplish this objective 2.0 PURPOSE OF THE OCR-VC AND

European capacity for monitoring and assimilating space based climate change observations Status and prospects This report, which is based on the findings of a workshop at Ispra in March 2009, provides the scientific background to a forthcoming Commission response to the Space and Competitiveness councils requests that the commission assess the ne...

Global chlorophyll products derived from NASA's ocean color satellite programs have a nominal uncertainty of ±35%. This metric has been hard to assess, in part because the data sets for evaluating performance do not reflect the true distribution of chlorophyll in the global ocean. A new technique is introduced that characterizes the chlorophyll unc...

Depth-integrated primary productivity (PP) estimates obtained from satellite ocean color-based models (SatPPMs) and those generated from biogeochemical ocean general circulation models (BOGCMs) represent a key resource for biogeochemical and ecological studies at global as well as regional scales. Calibration and validation of these PP models are n...

Having and maintaining suitable water quality is critical to sustain life on our planet. Monitoring of water quality using remote sensing, in conjunction with strategic in situ sampling can play a crucial role in determining the current status of water quality conditions and helps anticipate, mitigate and even avoid future water catastrophes. The G...

The relationship between surface production and benthic standing stock is fundamental to understanding biogeography in the deep sea. While much has been learned about the complex oceanographic processes involved in energy transfer to the benthos on local scales, the correspondence of overhead production to benthic community structure on regional sc...

In recent years there has been significant progress both in the use of satellite ocean colour remote sensing and coupled hydrodynamic biological models for producing maps of different dominant phytoplankton groups in the global ocean. In parallel to these initiatives, there is ongoing research largely following on from Alan Longhurst's seminal work...

Chlorophyll-a specific absorption (aph*) is a parameter used in bio-optical and primary production models and its coefficients are usually assumed to be constant. However, it has been documented in previous studies that these coefficients vary significantly due to pigmentation and "the package effect" which are a function of the taxonomic compositi...

The third primary production algorithm round robin (PPARR3) compares output from 24 models that estimate depth-integrated primary production from satellite measurements of ocean color, as well as seven general circulation models (GCMs) coupled with ecosystem or biogeochemical models. Here we compare the global primary production fields correspondin...

The third primary production algorithm round robin (PPARR3) compares output from 24 models that estimate depth-integrated primary production from satellite measurements of ocean color, as well as seven general circulation models(GCMs) coupled with ecosystem or biogeochemical models. Here we compare the global primary production fieldscorresponding...

Satellite ocean color data from the Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) in 1979 to 1984 and the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-vievv Sensor (SeaWiFS) in 1998 to 2003 are examined to determine whether there have been changes in chlorophyll concentration and suspended sediment as indicated by changes in satellite-derived optical properties during the past t...

The Yellow Sea is a shelf sea surrounded by the Korean peninsula and the eastern coast of China. The bordering countries derive a substantial share of their food from fishing in these coastal waters. Synoptic maps of water-column integrated primary production in May and September were derived using a primary production algorithm applied to ocean co...

This study presents an approach for optimally parameterizing a reflectance model. A parameterization scheme is realized based on a comprehensive bio-optical data set, including subsurface downwelling and upwelling irradiance spectra, absorption spectra of particle and dissolved substances, as well as chlorophyll and total suspended matter concentra...

Monthly and seasonal means of the spectral solar radiation at the sea surface is determined at global scale (1° × 1° grid) from satellite composite imagery. The transmittance functions of each atmospheric component have been modified from an existing clear-sky radiative model to assimilate data sets from multiple satellite sensors, including the Se...

The concept of oceanic provinces or domains has existed for well over a century. Such systems, whether real or only conceptual, provide a useful framework for understanding the mechanisms controlling biological, physical and chemical processes and their interactions. Criteria have been established for defining provinces based on physical forcings,...

Specific features observed in the Baltic coastal phytoplankton field are investigated in this work. The features are initially described by the means of Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) level-3 imagery processed within the Ocean Colour European Archive Network (OCEAN) Project and indexed for the Baltic region. The observations made are further sup...

Chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) absorption measurements and their relationship with fluorescence and salinity are presented for a highly dynamic coastal environment. The results were obtained in the context of seasonal cruises in 1994 in the southern Baltic Sea. They encompass the large gradient of geophysical parameters existing in th...

p>A methodology is proposed here to satisfy a community requirement for a regional solution to developing algorithms in coastal waters. A three component model, which allows maximum variability of the non-chlorophyllous components, was developed. This model was then systematically applied to a range of input values of the forward model defined usin...

The presented study examines, for substantial datasets in different Case II waters, the variability of the spectral absorption of Non-Chlorophyllous Particles (NCP) and Colored Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM). The investigation has considered the validity of the currently proposed modeling of the absorption of these tow components as a single varia...

Based on in situ data collected in the Southern Baltic Proper at three different periods of the year this study investigates the possibility to empirically retrieve Chlorophyllous and Non Chlorophyllous matter absorption coefficients in the Baltic Sea using 'SeaWiFS' type spectral information. It relies on the classical relationship between 'remote...

Absorption and fluorescence of chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) measurements were performed during three oceanographic surveys in 1994 in the southern Baltic Sea (Polish area of the Baltic Proper). DOC was measured both by high-temperature catalytic oxidation (HTCO) and low-temperature oxidation (LTO)...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Southampton, 1998.