Offering a foretaste of what’s to come once it is fully commissioned, ESA’s EarthCARE satellite has returned the first images from its broadband radiometer instrument. These initial images offer a tantalising glimpse into the intricacies of our planet’s energy balance – a delicate balance that governs our climate.
Earth’s energy balance accounts the amount of energy it receives from the Sun, solar radiation, and the amount of thermal radiation that Earth emits back out to space.
Influenced by numerous factors, including clouds, aerosols and greenhouse gases, this balance is vital for maintaining Earth’s relatively stable temperatures.
Although it is well-known that human activities are increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, aerosols also enter the atmosphere from industrial plants, traffic and agricultural practices, as well as from natural sources.
Global temperatures are rising, so understanding and monitoring the radiation balance is crucial for studying and addressing climate-related issues, which is why ESA, together with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, built the EarthCARE satellite.
EarthCARE has been designed to measure various aspects of our atmosphere to help us understand how clouds and aerosols reflect incoming solar energy back out to space and how they trap outgoing infrared energy.
This information is crucial to understand climate change and to predict the rate at which clouds and aerosols could lose their current overall cooling effect in the future.
Remarkably, despite only being launched a little over a month ago, EarthCARE has already returned the first data from its cloud profiling radar.
And now, its broadband radiometer is also demonstrating its impressive capabilities.
ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli, said, “Of course we have never doubted the EarthCARE broadband radiometer’s potential, but here we see, at such an early stage in the mission, that the instrument is working very well and delivering excellent data.
“Each of the satellite’s different instruments has an extremely important role to play – and when all of them are working in harmony and the satellite is commissioned, then the scientific community and weather forecasters will have a powerful tool to advance our understanding of Earth’s energy balance, advance climate science and improve weather predictions.”
Crucial to the mission, the broadband radiometer measures radiative fluxes at the top of Earth's atmosphere.
As the satellite travels along its orbit, the broadband radiometer is unique in the fact that it views the atmosphere from three directions simultaneously.
This information will allow scientists to accurately measure how much incoming energy from the Sun is being reflected back out to space and how much thermal energy is being emitted from Earth’s surface at the same time.
The broadband radiometer’s three different viewing angles – one directly down from the satellite, one in front of the satellite’s path (forward) and one behind the satellite’s path (backward) – are key to capturing systematic three-dimensional views of both reflected and emitted radiation.
Comparing this to the radiation calculated from the combined measurements from the satellite’s other instruments will significantly improve our understanding of aerosol–cloud–radiation interactions.
Offering a foretaste of what’s to come once it is fully commissioned, ESA’s EarthCARE satellite has returned the first images from its broadband radiometer instrument. These initial images offer a tantalising glimpse into the intricacies of our planet’s energy balance – a delicate balance that governs our climate.
Earth’s energy balance accounts the amount of energy it receives from the Sun, solar radiation, and the amount of thermal radiation that Earth emits back out to space.
Influenced by numerous factors, including clouds, aerosols and greenhouse gases, this balance is vital for maintaining Earth’s relatively stable temperatures.
Although it is well-known that human activities are increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, aerosols also enter the atmosphere from industrial plants, traffic and agricultural practices, as well as from natural sources.
Global temperatures are rising, so understanding and monitoring the radiation balance is crucial for studying and addressing climate-related issues, which is why ESA, together with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, built the EarthCARE satellite.
EarthCARE has been designed to measure various aspects of our atmosphere to help us understand how clouds and aerosols reflect incoming solar energy back out to space and how they trap outgoing infrared energy.
This information is crucial to understand climate change and to predict the rate at which clouds and aerosols could lose their current overall cooling effect in the future.
Remarkably, despite only being launched a little over a month ago, EarthCARE has already returned the first data from its cloud profiling radar.
And now, its broadband radiometer is also demonstrating its impressive capabilities.
ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli, said, “Of course we have never doubted the EarthCARE broadband radiometer’s potential, but here we see, at such an early stage in the mission, that the instrument is working very well and delivering excellent data.
“Each of the satellite’s different instruments has an extremely important role to play – and when all of them are working in harmony and the satellite is commissioned, then the scientific community and weather forecasters will have a powerful tool to advance our understanding of Earth’s energy balance, advance climate science and improve weather predictions.”
Crucial to the mission, the broadband radiometer measures radiative fluxes at the top of Earth's atmosphere.
As the satellite travels along its orbit, the broadband radiometer is unique in the fact that it views the atmosphere from three directions simultaneously.
This information will allow scientists to accurately measure how much incoming energy from the Sun is being reflected back out to space and how much thermal energy is being emitted from Earth’s surface at the same time.
The broadband radiometer’s three different viewing angles – one directly down from the satellite, one in front of the satellite’s path (forward) and one behind the satellite’s path (backward) – are key to capturing systematic three-dimensional views of both reflected and emitted radiation.
Comparing this to the radiation calculated from the combined measurements from the satellite’s other instruments will significantly improve our understanding of aerosol–cloud–radiation interactions.