EarthCARE launched in 2024 with four linked sensors

A 2024 launch with a focused question

EarthCARE lifted off on 29 May 2024. The European Space Agency’s mission was designed to observe clouds, aerosols and radiation together.[1]

ESA and JAXA developed EarthCARE together. After commissioning ended in late 2024, they began releasing first-level data in January 2025.[4]

Clouds and aerosols can reflect or absorb incoming solar energy and affect outgoing infrared radiation; aerosols can also seed cloud formation. Those interactions motivate EarthCARE’s measurements, but one orbit pass cannot establish a climate trend.[4]

Four instruments, different jobs

A lidar emits light pulses and uses their returns to profile aerosol and cloud layers, including layer height and optical properties. JAXA’s millimetre-wave radar probes cloud interiors, including vertical motion, particle properties, water and light precipitation.[2]

A multispectral imager supplies a wider visible and infrared view around those narrow profiles. The broadband radiometer measures reflected sunlight and outgoing thermal radiation from three viewing directions.[2]

Together, lidar and radar provide vertical profiles, the imager supplies wider context, and the radiometer samples energy flows at the top of the atmosphere. Lidar profiles can distinguish aerosol type; radar also detects cloud and light-precipitation structure.[2]

From signal to data products

Level-1 records include lidar backscatter, radar reflectivity and Doppler profiles, imager radiances and broadband radiation. Level-2 products retrieve geophysical quantities from Level-1 measurements and auxiliary inputs such as meteorological data.[3]

Some Level-2 products combine several instruments. Three-dimensional cloud and aerosol scenes use vertical profiles with the imager’s across-track view. Other products include cloud-water and aerosol-extinction profiles, plus estimates of top-of-atmosphere radiation. These are retrievals, not photographs; radiative properties are calculated from the retrieved fields.[3]