ACROSS Mediterranean activities for EarthCARE validation and exploitation

The ESA-JAXA EarthCARE satellite mission, launched in May 2024, delivers vertical profiles of aerosols, clouds, and precipitation properties together with radiative fluxes, utilizing an instrumental suite of a high spectral resolution lidar (ATLID), a Doppler cloud radar (CPR), a multi-spectral imager (MSI), and a broadband radiometer (BBR). The simultaneous measurements will be utilized to improve our understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions (ACI) and their radiative effects and to assess the representation of clouds, precipitation, aerosols, radiative fluxes, and heating rates in weather and climate models [1]. Due to the multi-sensor complexity/diversity and the innovation of its standalone and synergistic products, the EarthCARE mission has several validation challenges and strong sub-orbital synergies are needed to address Cal/Val and science objectives.

The Mediterranean basin provides a complex aerosol-cloud environment for the exploitation EarthCARE's capabilities. For the validation of the EarthCARE products in the Mediterranean, the ACROSS validation activity will be implemented, which would increase synergies towards achieving the following objectives: (i) validate EarthCARE aerosol and cloud products using state-of-the-art ground-based and airborne facilities, (ii) implement science studies targeting radiative closures, ACI, and data assimilation experiments, (iii) and provide information for harmonizing and bridging past and future missions, to deliver Climate Data Records on aerosols and clouds.

The rationale for ACROSS is based on lessons learned from the JATAC campaign in the Atlantic [2]. Following the JATAC example, we target to implement 3 Intensive Observational Periods, including large-scale field experiments in the Mediterranean. The suborbital component follows the ASKOS [3] example. It includes (i) ACTRΙS Aerosol and Cloud remote sensing facilities and high-precision radiation measurements (Potenza site in Italy, Limassol Cyprus, as well as Pyrgos, Thessaloniki, and PANGEA sites in Greece), (ii) radiation measurements for closure studies, (iii) UAV and aircraft in-situ flights collocated with the remote sensing measurements. ACROSS activities will be clustered with the ARCHIMEDES experimental activities in the Mediterranean, foreseen between late 2026 and late 2027. ACROSS seeks synergies with airborne activities. To this end, the first synergistic measurements were collected during the PERCUSION campaign in November 2024, during which HALO underpass two EarthCARE tracks close to the Thessaloniki and PANGEA sites. More airborne activities are envisioned in the Mediterranean area for Spring/September 2025/2026.

ACROSS is a collaborative effort between NOA, DLR, the University of Nova Gorica, CyI, INOE, FMI, CNR-IMAA, PMOD, ERATOSTHENES CoE, CUT, and TROPOS. ACROSS is supported by ACTRIS RI and the dataset collected will support assimilation experiments and science activities in the framework of the PANGEA4CalVal, ATMO-ACCESS, and CERTAINTY EC projects and collaborations within.

References:

[1] Wehr T. et al., https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3581-2023, 2023.

[2] Fehr, T., et al., https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-7249, 2023. 

[3] Marinou, E. Et al., https://doi.org/10.3390/environsciproc2023026200, 2023.

Acknowledgments: This research was financially supported by the PANGEA4CalVal project (Grant Agreement 101079201) funded by the European Union, and the CERTAINTY project (Grant Agreement 101137680) funded by the Horizon Europe program. Part of the wok was financed through the Core Program within the Romanian National Research Development and Innovation Plan 2022-2027, carried out with the support of MCID, project no. PN 23 05.