The Canadian High altitude Aerosol Water vapour and Cloud (HAWC) Mission

Tha Canadian High altitude Aerosol Water vapour and Cloud (HAWC) mission is built upon innovative Canadian optical remote sensing technology and will provide important information related to water vapour, aerosols and cloud microphysics in the upper troposphere and lower stratopshere. HAWC is made up of three Canadian passive optical instruments, the Spatial Hetrodyne Observations of Water (SHOW), the Aerosol Limb Imager (ALI) and the Thin Ice Cloud and Far infraRed Emissions (TICFIRE) where the first two look at scattered sunlight in the atmospheric limb from low earth orbit and the latter instrument measures thermal emission in the nadir, also from low earth orbit. This presentation will outline the technology, the measurements and the expected scientific return of the HAWC mission that is expected to launch in the first part of the next decade.