How ATMO-ACCESS supports EarthCARE calibration and validation
The joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) EarthCARE is designed to measure clouds, aerosols and radiation more accurately than ever before. To enhance the precision of this new climate satellite, a comprehensive measurement campaign is underway, involving approximately 50 ground stations. This initiative is coordinated by TROPOS in Leipzig and is supported by the ATMO-ACCESS H2020 project.
The observation stations of the European research infrastructure ACTRIS play an important role in calibrating the data from the EarthCARE satellite: they have been established and expanded in recent years to analyse aerosol particles and clouds using remote sensing instruments such as lidar and radar. Around 50 stations in Europe and overseas are involved in the atmo4ACTRIS measurement campaign. Photo: Tilo Arnhold, TROPOS
EarthCARE was successfully launched into orbit around the Earth on May 29, 2024, equipped with four advanced instruments.
What sets this mission apart is the collaborative functionality of these instruments, which will collectively offer a comprehensive perspective on the intricate interactions between clouds, aerosols, and radiation. This will yield fresh insights into Earth’s radiation balance in the context of the climate crisis.
Together, these measurements will help to better understand how clouds and aerosols reflect incoming solar energy back into space and how they trap thermal radiation emitted by the Earth. This information is important for understanding how climate change affects the Earth’s energy balance and for predicting how quickly clouds and aerosols might lose their current cooling effect in the future.
To ensure optimal use and interpretation of the data from these new instruments, it is essential to compare them with ground-based and airborne measurements in a wide range of situations. Therefore, a series of complex international measurement campaigns are currently in progress.
The ground stations of the European research infrastructure ACTRIS play an important role in calibrating the data from the EarthCARE satellite: they have been established and expanded in recent years to analyse aerosol particles and clouds using remote sensing instruments such as lidar and radar. Around 50 stations in Europe and overseas are involved in the atmo4ACTRIS measurement campaign. This dense network offers the great advantage that EarthCARE flies over at least one of the stations practically every day, as the low-Earth orbit ensures that the satellite ‘flies’ over our planet in strips, only returning to the same part of the Earth every 25 days. A single ground station is therefore not sufficient for calibration. “As part of the ATMO-ACCESS infrastructure project, we rehearsed the measurement campaign for two months at the end of last year with simulated overflights to prepare ourselves for the complex task. This was very helpful, because although the ACTRIS stations all work according to the same standards, some of them have very different backgrounds when it comes to validating satellite data. We are all looking forward to comparing the first EarthCARE data with the ground-based measurements,” says Dr Holger Baars of TROPOS, who is coordinating the campaign from Leipzig.
The EarthCARE cal/val campaign is supported by ATMO-ACCESS in the frame of the pilot call for access for international stakeholders, activity coordinated by the National Institute of R&D for Optoelectronics (INOE) in Romania.
Sources:
ESA (EarthCARE profiles atmospheric particles in detail, 21/08/2024)
ACTRIS:
TROPOS:
