The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) Mission: New Capabilities Leading to New Insights on Aerosol.

The launch in February 2024 of NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission put into play the important innovations in the characterization of the global aerosol system from satellite remote sensing. All three PACE instruments: the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), the HyperAngle Rainbow Polarimeter 2 (HARP2) and the Spectro-polarimeter for Planetary eXploration one (SPEXone) will advance aerosol remote sensing beyond the expectations built over the past 25 years. Today’s standard aerosol products of spectral aerosol optical depth supplemented by measures of aerosol size and qualitative indicators of aerosol absorption will be advanced to include quantitative retrievals of single scattering albedo, aerosol layer height and with the polarimeters, detailed particle optical and physical properties. Focusing on OCI and the added information acquired from a broad spectral instrument that reaches from the ultraviolet to the shortwave infrared, we will discuss an algorithm that makes use of this information and the products available from this algorithm using examples from OCI’s first year of on-orbit operations.