An oral and poster session in support of the EarthTemp Network was recently held at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, CA from 9-13 December 2013. The session was titled "Taking the temperature of the Earth: Challenges and applications across all Earth surface domains" and was organized and convened by Glynn Hulley and Pierre Guillevic from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.

The session was the first of its kind at the AGU in support of the EarthTemp network, which was established to stimulate new international collaboration in measuring Surface Temperatures (ST) across different domains of the Earth’s surface: air, land, sea, lakes, ice. The session was focused on improving the quality of satellite observation and in-situ measurements of ST, and on the mutual exploitation of different observing systems over a range of applications. Topics included algorithm improvement, ST product validation, understanding the relation between the surface skin and air temperature, and quantification of uncertainties. Twenty-six abstracts were submitted to the session from scientists with a ranging expertise in ST studies, and were subdivided into a poster session (18) and an oral session (8). The oral session included four invited speakers each with an expertise in a particular ST Earth surface domain; Peter Minnett (ocean surface), Dorothy Hall (cryosphere), Philip Jones (surface air temperature), and Pierre Guillevic (land surface temperature).