EARTHCARE- A NEW MISSION PROVIDING GLOBAL CLOUD AND AEROSOL PROFILES

In November 2004 it was decided that EarthCARE would become the European Space Agency‘s (ESA’s) sixth Earth Explorer mission after GOCE, ADM-Aeolus, Cryosat, SMOS and SWARM. The EarthCARE mission is a joint undertaking by ESA and Japan. The mission has been specifically defined with the scientific objectives of determining for the first time, in a radiatively consistent manner, the global distribution of vertical profiles of cloud and aerosol field characteristics to provide basic essential input data for numerical modelling and global studies. The basic objective is to include cloud-aerosol-radiation interactions in climate and numerical weather prediction models. Specifically, the scientific objectives are: 1. The observation of the vertical profiles of natural and anthropogenic aerosols on a global scale, their radiative properties and interaction with clouds. 2. The observation of the vertical distributions of atmospheric liquid water and ice on a global scale, their transport by clouds and their radiative impact. 3. The observation of cloud distribution (“cloud overlap”), cloud-precipitation interactions and the characteristics of vertical motions within clouds, and 4. The retrieval of profiles of atmospheric radiative heating and cooling through the combination of the retrieved aerosol and cloud properties The key parameters determining the radiative properties of clouds and aerosols are: The extinction and absorption properties of aerosols. Large scale cloud structure, including cloud fraction and overlap, Cloud condensate content, particle size, shape and small scale cloud structure. For this purpose a scientific payload consisting of nadir looking radar and lidar, a multi-spectral imager and a broad-band radiometer has been proposed