The role of satellite remote sensing in mitigating and adapting to global climate change

Climate change has critical adverse impacts on human society and poses severe challenges to global sustainable development. Information on essential climate variables (ECVs) that reflects the substantial changes that have occurred on Earth is critical for assessing the influence of climate change. Satellite remote sensing (SRS) technology has led to a new era of observations and provides multiscale information on ECVs that is independent of in situ measurements and model simulations. This enhances our understanding of climate change from space and supports policy-making in combating climate change. However, it remains challenging to remotely retrieve ECVs due to the complexity of the climate system. We provide an update on the studies on the role of SRS in climate change research, specifically in monitoring and quantifying ECVs in the atmosphere (greenhouse gases, clouds and aerosols), ocean (sea surface temperature, sea ice melt and sea level rise, ocean currents and mesoscale eddies, phytoplankton and ocean productivity), and terrestrial ecosystems (land use and land cover change and carbon flux, water resource and hydrological hazards, solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence and terrestrial gross primary production). The benefits and challenges of applying SRS in climate change studies are also examined and discussed. This work will help us apply SRS and recommend future SRS studies to mitigate and adapt to global climate change.