EC-KLIM - Coordination of German EarthCARE Validation

Abstract

The joint ESA and JAXA Earth Explorer mission EarthCARE is designed to close gabs in the knowledge of aerosol, clouds and their interactions, and effects on radiation. For this the platform comprises four remote sensing instruments observing the vertical structure of the atmosphere with a highly spectral resolving lidar and a doppler cloud radar. Together with a hyperspectral imager radiation fluxes can be inferred and compared to the measurements of the on-board broad band radiometer. Based on these four instruments EarthCARE will provide over 40 data products, which are partly synergistic products of observations of all instruments. For the success of the mission it is therefore crucial to exactly validate the individual data products and to quantify their errors. A variety of observational sources are used, reaching from ground-based stations and networks to airborne measurements, and from satellite observations to modelled data. Already in the past a number of dedicated validation campaigns to prepare for validation from German research institutes were carried out with eg. the ground-based cloud observation system LACROS or with an EarthCARE-like payload on board the German research aircraft HALO. After launch a continuous validation of EarthCARE products will be necessary. For this the German Initiative for the Validation of EarthCARE (GIVE) bundles the expertise of the German atmospheric research community and aims at the validation of the entire chain of EarthCARE Level 1 and 2 products and the evaluation of related algorithms and instrument calibrations. The GIVE project will include dedicated campaigns as well as long‐term support over the lifetime of the mission. Here we want to introduce in general the German project EC-KLIM (former project office) to prepare for the use of EarthCARE, and especially of the GIVE project. We will present an overview of past preparation campaigns and of planned German validation activities.