Special issue  

The Special Issue aims at establishing a broad scientific platform for disseminating the results of the "Earth Observation for Land-Atmosphere Interaction Science" conference (jointly organized by ESA, iLEAPS and EGU), which took place in Frascati last 3-5 November 2010. In particular, the Special Issue will provide a complete and comprehensive synopsis of stateof- art research activities and developments exploiting Earth observation (EO) data in support of land-atmosphere interaction studies.

Land-atmosphere interactions include a variety of critical feedbacks among radiative, hydrological, and biogeochemical processes resulting in complex exchanges of energy and matter influencing the overall Earth system and its climate. The observation, understanding and prediction of such processes and their impacts have been hindered in the past by the lack of suitable data at the required spatial and time scales. In the last few years, EO data integrated with in situ networks and within suitable models have demonstrated the potential to become a major tool for observing key variables and characterizing main processes governing land-atmosphere interactions at global to local scales.

In the next few years the capabilities of monitoring land surface and atmosphere will further improve by the increasing number of advanced EO missions to be launched by space agencies. The full exploitation of such increasing multi-mission observational capacity requires harmonized research efforts involving both EO and Earth-system scientists, modellers, and institutions to develop novel observations and robust biophysical products to be effectively integrated with in situ data and within appropriate coupled models.

In this context, the conference has brought together the EO and Earth-system communities, as well as scientific institutions and space agencies involved in the observation, characterisation and forecasting of land-atmosphere interactions and their impacts. In particular, the event represented a first practical attempt for facilitating the communications and scientific exchanges among these different communities in order to enhance the coordination of specific scientific efforts and advocate for a common view of major scientific needs and priority areas for the future.