# Satellite Climate Data Records: Development, Applications, and Societal Benefits
## 3 CDR Products and Applications
### CDRs and Scientific Applications
#### 3.1.3. EumetSAT's Climate Monitoring SAF  
European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites' (EUMETSAT's) Satellite Application Facility (SAF) on Climate Monitoring (CM) (CMSAF [79]) develops, generates, archives, and distributes high-quality satellite-derived products of the global energy and water cycle and related sustained services in support to understand our climate. One of the major highlights of CMSAF is the long-term commitment, the funding is currently guaranteed until 2035. The major datasets from CMSAF are:  
* _SSM/I FCDR_: The CM SAF Fundamental Climate Data Record of SSM/I Brightness Temperatures provides homogenized and inter-calibrated brightness temperatures from the six SSM/I radiometers aboard F08, F10, F11, F13, F14, and F15 of DMSP. The applications of this FCDR are similar to those described above for the NOAA SSMI Brightness Temperature CDR.
* _Free tropospheric Humidity (FTH)_: FTH is an important climate variable due to its large sensitivity to OLR and thus a strong feedback factor in the Earth's climate system. Monitoring of FTH globally is therefore important to understand our changing climate. However, measuring humidity in the free troposphere is a challenge and there are only a few datasets available for FTH. The FTH dataset produced by the EUMETSAT's CMSAF [80] are derived from Meteosat (Meteorological Satellites) 1 st and 2 nd generation geostationary satellites. FTH is a key climate variable that plays a very important role in Earth's radiation budget, however, FTH is not well simulated by current climate models [81].
* _HOAPS_: The Hamburg Ocean Atmosphere Parameters and Fluxes from Satellite (HOAPS) data set [82] is a satellite-based climatology of precipitation, evaporation, freshwater budget (evaporation minus precipitation), related turbulent heat fluxes and atmospheric state variables as well as liquid water path and total column water vapor over the global ice free oceans.
* _CLARA-A1_: CM SAF Clouds, Albedo and Radiation AVHRR data edition 1 (CLARA A1) surface radiation properties, cloud properties, and surface albedo datasets [83] are a global dataset derived from measurements of the series of AVHRR on the NOAA satellite series including METOP-A satellite. Its applications are similar to the NOAA AVHRR cloud CDRs.
* _SARAH_: The Surface Solar Radiation Data Set--Heliosat (SARAH) [84] is a satellite-based climatology of the solar surface irradiance, the surface direct normalized irradiance and the effective cloud albedo derived from satellite observations of the visible channels of the Meteosat Visible and Infrared Imager (MVIRI) and Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIR) instruments onboard the geostationary Meteosat satellites. The data are available from 1983 to 2013 and cover the region \(\pm 65^{\circ}\) longitude and \(\pm 65^{\circ}\) latitude. The products are available as monthly, daily, and hourly averages on a regular latitude/longitude grid with a spatial resolution of \(0.05^{\circ}\times 0.05^{\circ}\).