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This indicator assesses the potential threat of wildfires due to fire weather intensity. Wildfires impose significant risks to human lives and economic activities. In extreme fire weather events, strong winds and wind-born debris may even weaken the integrity of infrastructure. Climate change may further increase the frequency of fire weather occurrences, including an increase in temperature, greater variance in rainfall and increase in fire season duration. Climate projections indicate that there could also be an increase in the severity of fire. This indicator is based on the Global Facility

The erosive force of rainfall (rainfall erosivity) is a major driver of soil, nutrient losses worldwide and an important input for soil erosion assessments models. This map shows the geographical distribution of erosivity changes for RCP8.5 for the period 2050–2070.

In most people's mind, soil would not figure highly in a list of the natural resources of Africa. However, healthy and fertile soils are the cornerstones of food security, key environmental services, social cohesion and the economies of most African countries. Unfortunately, soil in Africa tends to reach public awareness only when it fails – often with catastrophic consequences as seen by the famine episodes of the Sahel in the 1980s and more recently in Niger and the Horn of Africa. In the context of major global environmental challenges such as food security, climate change, fresh water

Understanding why and where humanitarian disasters are likely to occur is a fundamental step in saving lives and promoting sustainable development. The main focus of humanitarian organizations is people. The Vulnerability dimension of the INFORM Risk Index (global risk assessment for humanitarian crises and disasters) addresses the predispositions of a population to be affected by hazard (economic, political and social characteristics of the community). This layer presents the Food Security component of the INFORM Risk Index. It encompasses the actual quality and type of food supplied to

Crop conditions monitoring is highly relevant for food security early warning and response planning in food insecure areas of the world. GEOGLAM is the Group on Earth Observations' Global Agricultural Monitoring Initiative. Its main objective is to reinforce the international community's capacity to produce and disseminate relevant, timely and accurate forecasts of agricultural production at national, regional, and global scales by using Earth Observation data. Copernicus4GEOGLAM is one of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Services managed by the EC Joint Research Centre. This project aims at

Ocean temperature is related to ocean heat content (the energy absorbed by the ocean), an important topic in the study of global warming. Monitoring of sea surface temperature (SST) from earth-orbiting infrared radiometers has had a wide impact on oceanographic science. It provides fundamental information on the global climate system and for the study of marine ecosystems. For example, it helps estimating heat stress conducive to coral bleaching, the process by which they expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissues and become white (bleached) and vulnerable. The NOAA Coral Reef Watch

Droughts affect millions of people in the world each year and have long-lasting socioeconomic impacts. They can occur over most parts of the world, even in wet and humid regions, and can profoundly impact agriculture, basic household welfare, tourism, ecosystems and the services they provide. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is the most commonly used indicator worldwide for detecting and characterizing meteorological droughts, which are prolonged periods of less than average rainfall in a given region. It measures precipitation anomalies at a given location, based on a comparison of

The Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation Absorbed (FAPAR) is used to track the overall primary productivity associated with atmospheric CO2 fixation. FAPAR anomalies relative to the average between 2003 and 2010 show large surface variations, in terms of values and coverage, of vegetation productivity conditions over Africa. Temperature and precipitation deficits are the main drivers for the negative anomalies. Each location with a negative anomaly (FAPAR value lower than the long-term mean for that location – shades of red) indicates relative vegetation stress during that 10-day

Evapotranspiration and carbon fluxes between the biosphere and the atmosphere are routinely expressed in terms of the Leaf Area Index (LAI) of the canopy. Monitoring the change of LAI is essential for assessing the evolution of the vegetation over Africa. LAI anomalies relative to the average values between 2003 and 2010 show apparent variations of vegetation cover over Africa. Increase of temperature and precipitation deficits are the main drivers for the negative anomalies. Human or animals may also locally impact the state of leaves. This record shows the anomalies of LAI every 10-days