The European Space Agency (ESA)'s Climate Change Initiative (CCI) programme kicked off in 2010.

The programme goal is to provide stable, long-term, satellite-based Essential Climate Variable (ECV) data products for climate modellers and researchers. The ECVs will be derived from multiple satellite data sets (not just ESA but all sources via international collaboration) and include specific information on the errors and uncertainties of the data set. Comprehensive information will also be provided on calibration and validation, long term algorithm maintenance, data curation and reprocessing. The Climate Change Initiative brings together European expertise covering the full range of scientific, technical and development specialisations available within the European Earth Observation community, and will establish lasting and transparent access for global climate scientific and operational communities to its results.