Since March 2017 National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH) become a member of the EUMETSAT consortium Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA-SAF), one of the main scientific programs for meteorological satellites where Bulgaria is working in partnership with 10 others European countries.

Implementation of LSA-SAF Program at NIMH has as a main priority the use of information from geostationary and polar-orbiting meteorological satellites Meteosat and Metop together with other sources of meteorological information (NWP- and meteorological models, ground observations, and other satellite platforms) for analyses and forecast of land surface state and related meteorological phenomena and processes. The work is based on quantitative description of the functional relations between energetic-water-carbon cycles to account for dynamic interrelations between vegetated land surface and environment. Multidisciplinary methods for assessment, analyses and forecast of extremes of land surface state have been developed giving accent on anomalous soil moistening and related weather-climate severe phenomena – heat waves and drought (agro meteorological / ecological); soil over moistening and risk of surface runoff; assessment of climatic resources and ecosystem productivity (natural and agro system); fire risk assessment and forecast; real time thermal anomalies detection by variety of satellite platforms. Project results are focused on improvement of existing practices and creation of new methods for analyses of biophysical processes on land surface with using satellite information as well as operational application of developed meteorological products and systems for diagnoses and early warnings. The work is realized in stages following project tasks within the five-year period, which at this stage include:

• 2017-2018 theme „Verification applicability of the new LSA-SAF version of the Canadian system of fire risk forecast for Bulgarian environment“.
• 2019-2020 theme „Assessment of applicability of Meteosat satellite products for characterizing climatic aspects of land-atmosphere interactions“.

Implementation period:    On-going
Project manager:        Assoc. Prof. Dr. Julia Stefanova Stoyanova (Georgieva)
Department:       Forecasts and Information Service, Remote sensing division
E-mail:             Julia.Stoyanova@***
Funding:            ЕUMETSAT LSA-SAF

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*** all e-mails of NIMH are in the meteo.bg domain