Towards a Quantification of Cloud-Aerosol-Radiation Interactions

The Earth Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explorer, EarthCARE, has been selected for implementation as the sixth Earth Explorer Mission of the European Space Agency’s Living Planet Programme [1]. The mission will measure three-dimensional structures of clouds and aerosols simultaneously with the respective outgoing broad band flux. These measurements would significantly contribute to the understanding of key parameters in the Earth radiation budget and quantify the impact of clouds and aerosols on radiation and flux. With this, EarthCARE would provide crucial data for the improvement of clouds and aerosols parameterisation in climate models and would furthermore contribute to improvements of numerical weather prediction [4]. With a target launch date in 2012, the mission would also provide data similar to ATrain missions CloudSAT and CALIPSO, thus supplementing and continuing their respective data sets of lidar and radar observations.