The European Space Agency is starting the mission consolidation (phase B) and procurement phase of the EarthCARE mission in cooperation with the Japanese space agency, JAXA. The mission aims at improving the representation and understanding of the Earth's radiative balance in climate and numerical weather forecast models by acquiring vertical profiles of clouds and aerosols, as well as the radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere. With a target launch date in 2013, the mission would also provide data similar to A-Train missions CloudSAT and CALIPSO, thus supplementing and continuing their respective data sets of lidar and radar observations.

The EarthCARE payload comprises two active and two passive instruments. The Atmospheric Lidar (ATLID) operates at 355 nm and is equipped with a high-spectral resolution receiver that will separate the back-scattered Mie and Rayleigh signals. The Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR), provided by the JAXA and NICT is a highly sensitive 94GHz cloud radar with Doppler capability. Lidar and radar will in synergy provide profiles of ice and liquid water content throughout the cloud. Cloud vertical movements will be measured using the Doppler capability of the CPR. A Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI) will support the active instruments and consists of a push-broom imager with 7 channels in the visible, near-IR, short-wave IR and thermal IR, with a 500 m spatial resolution and a 150 km swath. Finally, a Broad-Band Radiometer (BBR) will measure the outgoing top-of-atmosphere radiances in a short wave channel and a total wave channel, from which the long wave contribution can be deduced.

The combination of ATLID, CPR and MSI measurements will enable synergistic retrievals of three dimensional cloud and aerosol fields. Fluxes modelled from the retrieved fields can then be compared to fluxes derived from BBR measurements, thereby testing the understanding of the impacts of clouds and aerosols on the radiative field.

This paper will provide an overview of the EarthCARE mission including its current status and benefits for the climate and meteorological community.