This dataset comprises estimates of forest above-ground biomass for the years 2010, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. They are derived from a combination of Earth observation data, depending on the year, from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, Envisat’s ASAR (Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar) instrument and JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS-1 and ALOS-2), along with additional information from Earth observation sources. The data has been produced as part of the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) programme by the Biomass CCI team.

This release of the data is version 5. Compared to version 4, version 5 consists of an update of the three maps of AGB (aboveground biomass) for the years 2010, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and new AGB maps for 2015, 2016 and 2021. New AGB change maps have been created for consecutive years (2015-2016, 2016-2017 and 2020-2021), alongside an update of change maps for years 2010-2020, 2017-2018, 2018-2019 and 2019-2020, and for a decadal interval (2020-2010). The pool of remote sensing data now includes multi-temporal observations at L-band for all biomes and for all years. The AGB maps rely on revised allometries which are now based on a longer record of spaceborne LiDAR data from the GEDI and ICESat-2 missions. Temporal information is now implemented in the retrieval algorithm to preserve biomass dynamics as expressed in the remote sensing data. Biases between 2010 and more recent years have been reduced.

The data products consist of two (2) global layers that include estimates of:
1) above ground biomass (AGB, unit: tons/ha i.e., Mg/ha) (raster dataset). This is defined as the mass, expressed as oven-dry weight of the woody parts (stem, bark, branches and twigs) of all living trees excluding stump and roots
2) per-pixel estimates of above-ground biomass uncertainty expressed as the standard deviation in Mg/ha (raster dataset)

Additionally provided in this version release are new aggregated data products. These aggregated products of the AGB and AGB change data layers are available at coarser resolutions (1, 10, 25 and 50km).

In addition, files describing the AGB change between two consecutive years (i.e., 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2018-2017, 2019-2018, 2019-2020, 2020-2021) and over a decade (2020-2010) are provided (labelled as 2015_2016, 2016_2017, 2017_2018, 2018_2019, 2019_2020 and 2020_2010). Each AGB change product consists of two sets of maps: the standard deviation of the AGB change and a quality flag of the AGB change. Note that the change itself can be simply computed as the difference between two AGB maps, so is not provided directly.

Data are provided in both netcdf and geotiff format.