IGBP and Earth observation:
a co-evolution

Going back to 1987, when IGBP was created, there was much we did not know about our home planet. The discipline of Earth-system science – the study of Earth as a connected system – was in its infancy, having been proposed by NASA in its ‘Bretherton Reports’ (1). The modern era of satellite observations had only recently begun; scientific disciplines as well as the international community were much less integrated than they are today. The models that Earth scientists used to describe Earth’s behaviour and its future changes were much more “component-based”. Moreover, the international assessments that help to unite the community and distil enormous amounts of information into forms usable for scientists and policymakers were just getting under way: the WMO/UNEP ozone assessments did not gather steam until the mid-1980s, whereas the IPCC was not set up until 1988. That we find ourselves in a very different situation today is due in no small part to the efforts of the IGBP scientific community.

Convening communities, setting agendas
As the scientific community put this new observing capability to use, it led to research into some very visible and societally important topics: the Antarctic ozone hole discovered in the mid-1980s was actively investigated and the large 1987–1988 El Niño event (followed by a large La Niña event) provided particular foci for interdisciplinary observational and modelling studies. We came to measure the increasing rate of ice loss from the polar regions and regional rates of sea-level rise. Making sense of all these data and figuring out what they meant for the planet’s future required sophisticated Earth-system models. IGBP – by virtue of its ability to bring together different disciplines, communities and nations – was at the forefront of the development of models that combined physics, chemistry and biology. Such models now include realistic representation of the Earth’s carbon cycle and associated biology and biogeochemistry. IGBP not only provided a forum for model development but also facilitated inclusive model-model and model-observation intercomparison activities.

IGBP’s convening capacity is unparalleled: it played a particularly important role in bringing increased international participation into the NASA-initiated Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI) by endorsing it as an External Project in 2006. With this broader support NEESPI has become a highly successful programme. “The global research programmes have been vital in improving the interface between Earth observation and the Earth-system science community and in making sure the science community can get full value from the ESA programme,” says Stephen Briggs, Senior Advisor to ESA’s Earth Observation Programme, who initiated a Research Fellowship jointly between ESA and IGBP. “Input from the global change programmes helped enormously in orienting ESA satellite and applications development programmes, such as the recently selected Earth Explorer mission, BIOMASS. The IGBP community has played a significant role in setting the agenda for Earth-system science, and guiding ESA’s priorities in the exploitation of satellite data.” Dedicated joint projects between ESA and IGBP, such as the OceanFlux projects between ESA and the Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS; Figure 2), have helped strengthen this interface with Earth-system science researchers.

Looking back at its founding documents, the authors of “Toward an IGBP” (2) realised that “progress in understanding global change will require extensive and well-organised observations made over much of the Earth and over a long period of time.” Good progress has been made in coordinating and broadening Earth observation product use but it is crucial that we continue to do this in partnership with Future Earth. We hope Future Earth will combine the strong emphasis on advancing fundamental physical and biological science that IGBP and its partners have nurtured with increasing global efforts to use that knowledge to improve the quality of life for all the world’s citizens.  

The space agencies and scientific community all owe a debt to those who contributed their time and effort towards making IGBP such a valuable contributor to, and resource for, the Earth-system science community.