Ruben Urraca is a scientific officer at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre providing scientific support to the Copernicus Programme. His efforts focus on improving the quality of Copernicus products to increase the uptake of satellite observations in the monitoring of European policies. His main activity consists of assessing the fitness-for-purpose of the essential climate variables (ECVs) provided by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, inter-comparing satellite, reanalysis, model and in-situ data from ECVs mainly related to the energy budget and land domain. For these assessments, Ruben developed new methods to quantify and correct the spatiotemporal mismatch between satellite and in-situ measurements. He also works on the uncertainty characterization of Copernicus products, contributing to the transition from validation metrics to uncertainty estimates. In this regard, he currently participates in Joint CEOS WGCV / GSICS SITSat Task Team, which aims to coordinate future SI-Traceable Satellite missions (SITSats) missions. Ruben also contributes to the implementation of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service and the development of the future Copernicus CO2 monitoring capacity. Ruben has a PhD in data science from the University of La Rioja (Spain) in 2018. He worked as a scientist at the University of La Rioja developing new quality control methods for solar radiation measurements. At JRC, before joining Copernicus, he was involved in several projects evaluating the uncertainty propagation of solar radiation data in photovoltaic models and assessing the achievements of Covenant of Mayors 2020 using the bottom-up inventories self-reported by the municipalities.
