Welcome to the EarthCARE Validation Portal.

This part of the EarthCARE validation website serves as introductory information, 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.

Introduction to the EarthCARE mission 

EarthCARE will measure the 3D structure of cloud and aerosols, together with collocated observations of solar (shortwave) and terrestrial (thermal) radiation. For this purpose, the satellite carries four scientific instruments, two active instruments – a lidar and a radar – to measure the vertical distribution of clouds and aerosols, an imager  to collect cloud and aerosol information across the satellite ground track and a broadband radiometer for measuring outgoing reflected solar and emitted thermal at the top of the atmosphere. 

News

• The EarthCARE launch date has been set to June 2022. Further news on the mission status can be found here (Mission Status)

EarthCARE Mission resources

Further information about the EarthCARE mission in general can be obtained from the following resources:

Websites

• 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/

Articles

• A scientific paper about the EarthCARE Mission in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

Documents

• The EarthCARE Mission Requirements Document 
• The EarthCARE System Requirements Document
• The EarthCARE Instrument Description
• The EarthCARE Validation Requirements Document

EarthCARE Validation

The geophysical validation of EarthCARE involves a suite of correlative instruments and methods. This portal provides an overview of the validation activities  and support functions for the validation teams. The contributions are resulting from the responses to the ESA Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for the Validation of EarthCARE. 

The contributions 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 should contact esa-ecvt@earthcare.esa.int

EarthCARE Validation Resources

Websites

• A Summary of Contributions to the ESA EarthCARE Validation Programme
• The (restricted) portal for the ESA EarthCARE Validation Team Principal Investigators 
• The ESA Atmospheric Validation Data Centre (EVDC)

Documents

• The Scientific Validation Implementation Plan (in preparation) 
• The reference documents of the EarthCARE Validation Announcement of Opportunity (now closed, but you can still contact esa-ecvt@earthcare.esa.int in case you are interested in collaboration)
• The report of the 1st ESA EarthCARE Validation Workshop held in June 2018 in Bonn, Germany

Meetings/Workshops

• The report and the presentations of the 1st ESA EarthCARE Validation Workshop (2018)

Tools

• [Links to already existing overpass and visualisation tools, placeholder for future tools]