The LSA SAF ET Product: An Operational Service of Sub-Daily Estimation of Evapotranspiration in Near-Real Time Across Europe, Africa and Eastern South America

The Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA SAF) is a programme of EUMETSAT. Its major goal is the development of products characterizing the condition of the Earth's continental surfaces on the basis of meteorological satellite observations. The exchange of energy and water fluxes between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere is crucial to a series of processes that impact human life. Noteworthy examples are: agriculture yields, water availability, intensity and extent of droughts, the ability of ecosystems to provide services to society, etc. The relevance of these processes has motivated the exploitation of satellite observations from the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) to develop algorithms for the estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) and surface heat fluxes (SF) in an operational framework functioning in near-real time. This contribution presents details of the main principles of the algorithm, the forcing variables and the ways of accessing and using the data.