EarthCARE Cal/Val Campaigns - Overview

The Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) is a satellite mission developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to measure global profiles of aerosol, cloud and precipitation properties along with radiative fluxes and derived warming rates, with the goal of advancing our understanding of cloud-aerosol and radiation interactions and the Earth's radiative budget. Assuring the data quality of EarthCARE science products early after launch is an essential effort. This will be realised based on contributions from the independent EarthCARE validation team (ECVT) under coordination by ESA as well as monitoring-, calibration- and campaign activities performed under ESA (co-)management. An early focus to stabilize the data quality will be on airborne activities underflying the satellite with remote sensing and in-situ payloads. This will be done either in the context of larger science field campaigns or in individual activities, flanked by ground based measurement activities. The presentation will give an overview of ESAs planned EarthCARE campaign activities, both directly implemented by ESA and in collaboration with science teams, and selected airborne and ground based instrument developments critical for the EarthCARE validation.