TIMELINE - Processing of AVHRR time series over Europe and North Africa

Abstract

TIMELINE stands for “TIMe Series Processing of Medium Resolution Earth Observation Data assessing Long -Term Dynamics In our Natural Environment” and is a new project of the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). One of its primary goals is to re-process the full time series of available AVHRR data over Europe. For this, the existing in-house archive of AVHRR HRPT data (resolution at nadir: 1km) is consolidated with third-party data sources in order to complete an entire archive of all AVHRR observations recorded since the early 1980s. Pre-processing of the raw data includes precise navigation, orthorectification, and calibration, relying on up-to-date routines and coefficients. An additional homogenizing effort is undertaken to account for the different sensor characteristics in the AVHRR series. The processing chain leads to Level2 and, finally, to gridded Level3 products, whose specifications shall conform to the current requirements of the scientific community. The final products palette will contain the basic L1b products as well as a set of eighteen additional products (Albedo, LST, SST, Snow cover, Sea Ice, NDVI, LAI, FAPAR, FVC, Burnt Area, Hot spots, Water masks, Cloud fraction, Cloud phase, Cloud top temperature, Cloud optical thickness, Cloud effective radius, and Cloud liquid/ice water path). The TIMELINE data policy is free and open, time series download will be available through DLR servers.