EarthCARE, ESA’s Cloud and Aerosol Mission, Preparing for Launch

The influence of clouds on incoming solar and reflected thermal radiation remains the largest contribution to the overall uncertainty in climate feedbacks due to the diverse cloud formation processes. Furthermore, climate models still show deficiencies in correctly representing aerosol-cloud interactions and precipitation patterns limiting the overall confidence in climate predictions.

Global observations of vertical cloud ice and liquid water profiles with simultaneous and collocated solar and thermal flux observation will provide crucial data to address this uncertainty. Furthermore, collocated global observation of vertical aerosol profiles and types are required to address their direct effects and indirect aerosol-cloud-interaction effects.

In response to these needs, the European Space Agency (ESA), in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), plans to launch the Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer Mission, EarthCARE – ESA’s Cloud and Aerosol mission – in May 2024.

The two active instruments embarked on the satellite, a cloud-aerosol lidar (ATLID) and a cloud Doppler radar (CPR), together with the passive multispectral imager (MSI) and broad-band radiometer (BBR), will provide synergistically derived vertical profiles of cloud ice and liquid water, aerosol type, precipitation, as well as heating rates, solar and thermal top-of-atmosphere radiances with the objective to reconstruct top-of-the-atmosphere short- and longwave fluxes at an accuracy of 10 Wm^-2 on a 10 km×10 km scene. The mission aims to significantly improve our understanding in the cloud and aerosol radiative feedback mechanisms, and their representation in climate and weather forecasting models.

The presentation will provide an up-to-date overview of the mission and science status weeks before the planned EarthCARE launch on a Falcon-9 rocket beginning of May 2024 from Vandenberg, USA. It will cover the mission’s science objectives, main performances of the three ESA instruments, expected science advances and foreseen validation activities. A detailed presentation on the data products, ground processing and data quality assurance will be provided by T. Hummel et al. at EGU24.