6

Understanding Climate Using Satellite Data (including EarthCARE)
Oral Programme
 / Tue, 07 Aug, 14:45–16:00  / Room Oxford
 / Wed, 08 Aug, 11:00–16:00  / Room Stanford
 / Thu, 09 Aug, 10:45–16:00  / Room Stanford
 / Fri, 10 Aug, 09:30–13:00  / Room Stanford
Poster Programme
 / Attendance Thu, 09 Aug, 16:30–18:15  / Display Thu, 09 Aug, 09:00–19:00  / Poster Hall

Satellite observations provide a continuous survey of our planet (the state and constituents of the atmosphere, surface and ocean). The synergistic use of different instruments is leading to major advances in the understanding of our climate. Specific topics of this session are:

* Understanding the Earth's climate from an Earth observational perspective
* Aerosol, cloud, precipitation and radiation processes and interactions in the climate system
* Evaluation of climate models
* Use of satellite observations to improve the representation of key processes in climate models


Subsession: EarthCARE: The next large observational step toward solution of the cloud-climate problem

The Earth, Clouds, Aerosols, and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) Mission, a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), will extend and advance the science objectives of CloudSat and CALIPSO. EarthCARE plans to launch in 2015 into a near sun-synchronous orbit with an equator-crossing time around 14h00 LST. Mission instruments include: a 355 nm high-spectral resolution lidar; a 94-GHz, Dopplerized CPR; a 7-channel Multi-Spectral Imager; and a Broadband Radiometer with three along-track views. Synergistic data use will allow retrievals of cloud and aerosol property profiles as well as radiative properties.

This session will focus on developments in retrieval techniques that will be applied to EarthCARE's data, verification strategies for these techniques, as well as EarthCARE data products and their potential applications within numerical weather prediction and climate modelling.