- Ref: 406775/2023-0
- Funding agency: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)
- Realization: 2023 - 2026
- PI: Eduardo Landulfo (Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares, IPEN. Brasil)
- Researchers: Eduardo Landulfo, Gregori de Arruda Moreira, Alexandre Lima Correia, Fábio Juliano da Silva Lopes, Damaris Kirsch Pinheiro, Jonatan Josão da Silva, João Basso Marques, Maria Paulete Pereira Martins, Humberto Alves Barbosa
- Collaborators: Juan Luis Guerrero-Rascado, Eleni Marinou, Vassilis Amiridis, Boris Barja, Robert Koopman, Hassan Bencheriff
Abstract
In 2024, the joint mission of ESA and JAXA, EarthCARE - the Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer satellite - is expected to expand our understanding of the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting incident solar radiation back into space and capturing infrared radiation emitted from the Earth's surface. This mission, which has learned from NASA's CALIPSO and ESA's TROPOMI, respectively, will have a set of instruments that will cover the Earth's radiative balance in climate and numerical weather prediction models, acquiring vertical profiles of clouds and aerosols, as well as radiation at the top of the atmosphere. Aerosols, in turn, control cloud properties, while clouds control precipitation production, and convection influences stratospheric humidity. Many groups around the world will conduct validation campaigns and provide their aerosol and cloud datasets to compare the initial results in order to improve mission products, and the related measurements will enhance the experimental results obtained by their instruments. As a global coverage mission, regional integration of measurements and related datasets must be well organized and will provide the opportunity to establish networks that have been largely unexplored until now. In this case, partners from South America and South Africa, with collaboration from European groups currently involved, will compose the mission's validation teams and their instruments, which will allow for a more in-depth exploration of scientific questions than at present. This proposal aims to initially explore four main scientific questions: 1. Long-range transport of biomass burning plumes from South America to Africa, 2. Study of the so-called South Atlantic Anomaly, 3. Troposphere-stratosphere-mesosphere coupling in the Southern Hemisphere, 4. Harmonization of observations to be carried out by networks and their instruments.