Copernicus has become a very successful programme and it is the leading global programme on Earth Observation based on an extensive suite of satellites integrated into public information services delivered to support environmental and civil security policies. Copernicus is used by thousands of users in the public sector, the research and scientific community, SMEs and start-ups providing new opportunities for business and jobs in Europe.
Over 2021-2027 Copernicus is expected to evolve these existing services to meet emerging user and policy needs, and introduce corresponding new satellite capacities. The basic principles driving the design of the evolution of satellites and service capacities of the program are defined both the by the next MFF regulation currently under discussion and by the space strategy issued end 2016.
General objectives remain at the core of the programme for the next MFF period:
• Monitoring the Earth to support the protection of the environment and the efforts of civil protection and civil security;
• Maximising socio-economic benefits, smart, sustainable and inclusive growth by promoting the use of Earth observation in applications and services;
• Fostering the development of a competitive European space and services industry;
• Ensuring autonomous access to environmental knowledge and key technologies for Earth observation and geoinformation services;
• Supporting and contributing to European policies and fostering global initiatives, such as GEOSS.
With the adoption of its Space Strategy for Europe in October 2016, the European Union has reaffirmed its role and its ambition in Space. The strategy advocates using space-related technology to tackle some of the most pressing challenges today for the benefits of EU citizens:
• First and ever, ensuring the continuity of services with greater efficiency and robustness while advancing the EU space programmes and meeting new user needs;
• Tackling urgent challenges: needs related, in particular, to climate change and sustainable development;
• Improving the EU's capacity to respond to evolving security concerns related to border control and maritime surveillance combining EU space programmes such as Copernicus and Galileo/EGNOS and more, to deliver appropriate solutions including dual use aspects with Defence;
• creating an environment favourable to the development of innovative space applications changing the paradigm from “bringing data to the user” to “bringing users to the data” for the internal market and local to global needs;
• encouraging space research activities in EU across all levels of value chains and promote technology-transfer/cross-fertilisation with non-space sectors, thanks to horizontal synergies and multidisciplinary approaches;
• Acting as a global actor to face global challenges and international commitments related to growing populations, increased demand for resources and climate change but also using space as a strategic asset for positioning Europe on the world stage.
In order to design the future of the Copernicus programme and ensure that the space and service capacities will be fit for purpose, user-driven and policy-driven, the Commission has defined a methodology to capture and maintain the high-level users’ requirements to be considered for the programme continuity and extension (e.g. studies, results of expert groups and task forces, interactions with DGs, users’ consultations, ..).
Both the process adopted and first outcomes of this exercise will be presented during the session. In particular, in the case of HPCM missions, some task forces and expert groups have been convened to deepen most important subjects deserving some expansion evolution of the programme.
These requirements will form the basis for Entrusted entities to translate them into mission requirement for enhanced or additional space capacities, new information services on top and possible need for additional contributing data sources.
This will highlight the necessity to go for some new expansion missions, to address new challenges like CO2 monitoring, polar zones monitoring or water, agriculture and forest management.

The major endeavour for Copernicus 2.0 is to prepare the evolution of the programme in line with the user needs, with a priority for public policy needs addressing European and global challenges, and national outlooks. The evolution will also benefit from current advances in space technologies and modelling.

According to the principles of the programme, the Copernicus evolution shall take duly account of:

• assuring user-driven continuity, increasing quality and extent of the existing observations (i.e. enhanced continuity) when so dictated by user requirements
• observation types according to EU policies and user needs
• employing state-of-art technologies for maximum efficiency and user uptake
• developing further partnerships and cooperation with Member States and within an international landscape

The enhanced continuity of EO capabilities meeting the evolving services' needs and the additional user needs that respond to new high-priority EU policies are key drivers for the evolution of Copernicus.

The various consultative processes over the last two years and the new priorities expressed by the Commission have shaped the discussion on and the development of the Copernicus evolution.

In this context, the Commission undertook an extensive study to gather User Requirements, based on which a User Requirement Document for the evolution of each service will be produced and adopted by the Commission, reflecting its own priorities.

The evolution of Copernicus is based on a large set of requirements collected in a continuous user consultation process led by the EC and relying on the following sources:

• The Copernicus Users Requirements study carried out by the European Commission
• The results of the User Workshops organised by the Commission
• The outcome of Task Forces organised by the Commission, relevant to pre-identified EU priority areas
• The consultations with Member States

The user requirements process is still ongoing.

The comparison between the demand for high quality EO measurements to support the current and future evolution of Copernicus (from the current status of the User Requirement Process ) and the offer (existing or planned EO Missions) establishes boundaries for the possible evolution paths of Copernicus. The Gap Analysis is an ESA living document that identifies the observation gaps between the existing Copernicus system (“as is”) and the (currently) desired future state (“to be”) and establishes evolution paths for the missions in response to the EC’s requirements based on:

• The definition of the Copernicus’ Services evolution responding to enhanced user needs;
• The EU policy priorities and their translation into observation requirements as established by the Task Forces and Expert Groups;
• The identification of gaps in space observation, taking account of current and planned Earth Observation missions from European and non-European sources, resulting in the definition of the new developments required to meet the observation requirements.

The results of the requirement consultation process of the Commission can be grouped in two categories:

1. Reliable continuity of the observations produced by the current Sentinels, with the demand to progressively increase the quantity and improve the quality of Copernicus products and services;
2. Emerging needs for new types of observations that are not covered by the existing Copernicus system.

In many cases, the user requirements from different sources are intertwined and overlapping, so they have been streamlined and grouped for comparison with the four measurement families as defined by the Long Term Scenario, to identify synergies and complementarities.
As there is no one-to-one mission-thematic/service area relationship, the gap analysis focused on four observational capability families, as defined in the Long Term Scenario, to identify gaps and enhance synergies and complementarities in response to user requirements and to EU policies.

Namely, the capability families are:

1. Microwave Imaging Family
2. Optical Imaging Family
3. Topographic Measurement Family; and
4. Spectroscopic Atmosphere Measurement Family

Those families, together with mass distribution and change measurements from gravity field data, encompass the current users and EU policy demands. The Gap Analysis identifies six mission called High Priority Candidate Mission (HPCM) that would fulfil user and policy requirements.
The Gap Analysis has compared, in a traceable way, the future user requirements as derived by the User Requirement Process of the Commission and the demand of the EU policy with existing or planned EO missions to identify enhancements and gaps of the current Copernicus Space Component and to establish evolution paths for the missions in response to the EC’s requirements.
The Gap Analysis summarises the benefits that current Services and their cross-cutting sectors will achieve if the identified gap missions will be implemented.

As part of the European Copernicus Programme, the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA) together with the support of the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are considering the further development of the first generation Copernicus Space Component to include measurements for fossil CO₂ emission monitoring. The greatest contribution to the increase in atmospheric CO₂ comes from emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and cement production. Current uncertainties associated with their emission estimates at national and regional scales may contribute to ill-informed policy decisions and limitations in assessing the effectiveness of CO₂ emission reduction strategies.

Satellite and in-situ atmospheric measurements, in addition to bottom-up inventories, would enable the transparent and consistent quantitative assessment of CO₂ emissions and their trends at the scale of megacities, regions, countries, and the globe as well. Such a capacity would provide the European Union with a unique and independent source of information, which can be used to assess the effectiveness of policy measures, and to track their impact towards decarbonizing Europe and meeting national emission reduction targets. Further, there would be potential synergies at international level with observation systems under discussion with other third parties.

This presentation will provide an overview of the CO₂ monitoring mission objectives, the observational requirements on CO₂ and auxiliary measurement capabilities. Operational monitoring of anthropogenic emissions requires high precision (0.5–0.7 ppm) CO₂ observations with 2–3 days geometrical revisit time at mid latitudes. These observations are supported by (1) multi-angle polarimeter observations, to minimize biases due to incorrect light path corrections, and (2) NO₂ observations as tracer for high temperature combustion. Retrieval of CO₂ is further facilitated by including a cloud imager to filter out measurements contaminated by low clouds and high altitude cirrus. The presentation provides a status update of activities and dedicated studies currently undertaken to prepare for the implementation of the space component of this monitoring system.

Evolution in the EU’s Copernicus and the Copernicus Space Component (CSC) is foreseen in the mid-2020s to meet priority user needs not addressed by the existing infrastructure, and/or to reinforce services by monitoring capability in the thematic domains of CO2, polar, and agriculture/forestry. This evolution will be synergetic with the enhanced continuity of services provided by the next generation of the existing Copernicus Sentinels (Copernicus 2.0).

This presentation gives an overview of the scientific/user and technical requirements for the Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography High Priority Candidate Mission (HPCM) currently studied in Phase A/B1 by ESA.

The primary objectives of the candidate mission are:
1. To measure and monitor variability of Arctic and Southern Ocean sea-ice thickness and its snow depth. Seasonal sea ice cycles are important for both human activities and biological habitats. The inter-annual variability of sea ice is a sensitive climate indicator; it is also essential for long term planning of any kind of activity in the polar regions. Knowledge of snow depth will lead to improved accuracy in measurements of sea ice thickness and is valuable input for forecast models. On shorter timescales, measurements of sea ice thickness and information about Arctic Ocean sea state are essential support to maritime operations over polar oceans.

2. To measure and monitor the surface elevation and changes therein of glaciers, ice caps and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. The two ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland store the major amount of fresh water and are important for climate change and contributions to sea level. Monitoring grounding line migration and elevation changes of floating and grounded ice sheet margins is important to identify and track emerging instabilities, which can negatively impact the stability of the ice sheets and result in future sea level rise.

The mission also has several secondary objectives: a) to contribute to the observation of global ocean topography as a continuum up to the poles;
b) to support applications related to coastal and inland waters. Observation of water level at the (Arctic) coast as well as of rivers and lakes is a key quantity in hydrological research; c) to support applications related to high latitude snow cover and permafrost.