Welcome to the EarthCARE ESA Validation Portal.
This part of the EarthCARE validation website serves as introductory information for scientists interested in EarthCARE validation, and also acts as a landing page for the (restricted) collaboration environment for the Principal Investigators of the ESA EarthCARE Validation Team. Scientists that are interested to collaborate on EarthCARE Validation are requested to contact esa-ecvt@earthcare.esa.int in order to obtain information on how to join the EarthCARE Validation Team.
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Introduction to the EarthCARE mission
EarthCARE , ESA’s Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explorer mission developed in co-operation with JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, will address the need for a better understanding of the interactions between cloud, radiative and aerosol processes that play a role in climate regulation. That ESA-JAXA Joint mission was selected as the 6th Earth Explorer Mission and 3rd ESA Earth Observation Core Mission during the Granada ESA meeting in October 2004.
The EarthCARE mission aims to improve the representation and understanding of the Earth's radiative balance in climate and numerical weather forecast models by acquiring vertical profiles of clouds and aerosols, as well as the radiances at the top of the atmosphere. Aerosols control cloud properties, while clouds control the production of precipitation and convection influences stratospheric humidity. The observations of EarthCARE will therefore lead to more reliable climate predictions and better weather forecasts through the improved representation of processes involving clouds, aerosol and radiation.
The satellite will weigh about 2350 kilograms (including propellant) and will be placed in a quasi-polar orbit of 97° inclination at an altitude of about 400 kilometres. EarthCARE has been launched on a Falcon 9 on 28 May 2024. The four instruments of the payload consist of an Atmospheric Lidar, a Broad-Band Radiometer and a Multi-Spectral Imager developed by ESA, and a Cloud Profiling Radar developed by JAXA. This instrument suite has been optimised to provide co-located samples of the state of the atmosphere along the satellite flight track.
News
- EarthCARE has been launched on
- The EarthCARE validation is in full swing, with thus far (status ) 43 underflights of 33 EarthCARE orbits by 7 aircraft involved in 6 campaigns with payloads including 5 lidars, 3 imagers, 1 polarimeter, 3 radars, and 4 different in-situ sampling suites, complemented by several networks of ground instruments and monitoring by ingestion assimilation models. Please refer to the validation plan and join the three EarthCARE workshops this year and the Living Planet symposium.
EarthCARE Mission resources
Further information about the EarthCARE mission in general can be obtained from the following resources:
- The ESA EarthCARE website at https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/The_Living_Planet_Programme/Earth_Explorers/EarthCARE
- The ESA Earthnet portal at https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/missions/esa-future-missions/earthcare
- The EarthCARE site at the EOportal https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/e/earthcare
- The JAXA EarthCARE website at https://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/earthcare/
- A scientific paper about the EarthCARE Mission in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
EarthCARE Validation
The geophysical validation of EarthCARE involves a suite of correlative instruments and methods. This portal provides an overview of the validation activities. These activities are resulting from the responses to the 2017 ESA Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for the Validation of EarthCARE.
The activities have been presented and reviewed during the 1st ESA EarthCARE Validation Workshop in June 2018 in Bonn, Germany.
The scientists in the EarthCARE validation team will collaborate with ESA algorithm and instrument experts and will be provided with preliminary EarthCARE data products as soon as available, hence well before public release of the consolidated data products.
| Scientists that are interested in collaboration and joining the ESA EarthCARE Validation Team are invited to contact esa-ecvt@earthcare.esa.int |
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EarthCARE Validation Resources
Websites
- A Summary of activities in the ESA EarthCARE Validation Programme
- The (restricted) portal for the ESA EarthCARE Validation Team Principal Investigators (in preparation)
- The ESA Atmospheric Validation Data Centre (EVDC)
Documents
- The EEarthCARE Scientific Validation Implementation Plan (2.0)
- The reference documents of the EarthCARE Validation Announcement of Opportunity (the proposal submission function is now deactivated, but you can still contact esa-ecvt@earthcare.esa.int in case you are interested in collaboration)
- The EarthCARE product list v6
Meetings/Workshops
Date | Venue | Title (link to workshop home page and presentations) | Report |
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| 13-15 June 2018 | Bonn, Germany | 1st ESA EarthCARE Validation Workshop | 20180613-15 ESA CalVal Workshop Report_(1.0).pdf |
| 10 March 2021 | Online | EarthCARE Geophysical Data Products and Retrievals | |
| 25-28 May 2021 | Virtual / Online | 2nd ESA EarthCARE Validation Workshop | 20210525-28 2nd ESA EarthCARE Cal_Val Workshop Report.pdf |
| 9-13 November 2023 | Frascati, Italy | ESA-JAXA Prelaunch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | pre-launch validation workshop report |
| 14-17 January 2025 | online | 1st ESA-JAXA EarthCARE In-Orbit Validation Workshop | |
| 17-21 March 2025 | Frascati,Italy | 2nd ESA-JAXA EarthCARE In-Orbit Validation Workshop | |
| Nov/Dec 2025 | , Japan | 2025 ESA-JAXA EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | |
| During Mission Life Time | TBC | Annual Validation Workshops |
Note that several additional meetings may be organised by validation subgroups and are not listed here.
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