Keynote: Spaceborne radar observations of clouds and precipitation from space: A new A-Train perspective

On April 28, 2006 a millimeter radar system, designed expressly for vertically profiling of hydrometeors, was launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base. Both Cloudsat, carrying the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR), and the lidar satellite CALIPSO, were inserted into nearly identical orbits each approximately 1 minute behind the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua satellite and in formation with the French PARASOL satellite and the EOS Aura satellite. This creates the A-Train satellite constellation. This talk will review several new findings from analysis of CloudSat data after a year of operation. The performance of the radar, comparison to other A-Train observations and the value of synergy of the different observations for studying clouds and precipitation will be underscored. The results presented will also emphasize the scientific and applications value in jointly observing cloud and precipitation properties.