ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE
Science and Validation Workshop

13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

Norwegian initiative for EarthCARE Validation of Aerosol
uncertainties and Radiation products in the Arctic – NEVAR
Kerstin Stebel, Ann Mari Fjæraa, Arve Kylling, Martin Ytre-Eide
The climate and environmental research institute NILU

Ground-based remote sensing
Ny-Ålesundsolar-/lunar PFR (2002-)
collaboration PMOD/WRCPandora (2020-)
PandoraAntarctica

Birkenes
Cimel solar/lunar photometer (2009 -)CL61 ceilometer (2021-)

Troll/Trollhaugen
PFR (2006/07-)
Pandora (2022/23-)

NEVAR phase 1
KO: 11 Nov. 2022

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

1. Inventory of correlative instrumentation and institutional
capabilities in the Arctic and Antarctica
 NEVAR Country Reports
A common overview of all instalments and projects, including data quality, relevant for EarthCARE
Cal/Val is currently missing Compile an overview of research projects, datasets, and research infrastructure instruments from all
Arctic and Antarctic areas that are relevant to the validation of the 44 data products of EarthCARE
 Identify, and give further recommendations of data availability gaps, data quality gaps,uncertainty, access gaps or bottlenecks
ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

Actual results are based on inputs to AO proposals for all EVID-projects EVID1-EVID42• Arctic is defined as European countries/regions > 60°N: Norway, Sweden, Finland,
Greenland/Denmark, Iceland, Atlantic Ocean, Alaska and Canada• Antarctic areas refers to the Antarctic Ice Shelf and the surrounding southern waters

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy Norway/Svalbard is the country with highest number of institutions (10) involved with contributions fromsix nations, from 14 instruments types, and at three sites
 Two institutions have reported to perform measurements in Greenland, none of these are national (Danish) Campaigns/measurements at eight sites in Antarctica, performed by three institution, three countries
and ten instrument types
 Norway is the only country with a BSRN station
ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), ItalyThere is still a need for harmonisation
on how the Cal/Val teams report on
their measurements
Lack of common wording across themeasurement principles, instrument
types and parameter descriptions
E.g., use of: CIMEL, Photometer, Sun
Photometer, …
 Feedback to the Cal/Val teams andreported in the Best Practices
document

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), ItalyNext steps –> 5. Engagement of the Arctic community The country reports will include an overview of national data providers, projects,and products and a count of data delivered (upstream) as well as use of EarthCARE
products and data within the country (downstream) Produce the inventory to attract and involve stakeholders and liaise with nationalorganizations on the design of a Polar Cal/Val strategy
 Foster prospective and existing Cal/Val teams in the region, including preparationof AO proposals and helping them identify possible sources of regional, national,and international funding
ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

2. Contribution to best practice protocol for validation of aerosoland cloud profiles
Main contribution to Chapter 4 on Correlative Metadata and Data Format
Regulated by the EarthCARE data exchange protocol and FAIR data principles

Use the GEOMS HDF/NetCDF data format

Data to EVDC – ESA Atmospheric Validation Data Centre Presented in detail at DEMO session and EVDC talk Thursday at 17:18
ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

NEVAR phase 2

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

3. Preparation for Global Evaluation of Aerosol uncertainties
BEFORE LAUNCH

 Goal is the evaluation of “AOD” pixel-level uncertainties
 Methodology was developed during the ESA Aerosol_CCI (Popp etal., 2016, and Kinne et al., 2017; see also review and framework ofpixel level uncertainty evaluation (Sayer et al., 2020)
 Prepare software; utilizing simulated EarthCARE data Can the methodology be applied to other geophysical variablesof EarthCARE ?

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

6. Evaluation of Aerosol uncertainties
EARTHCARE DATA AVAILABLE
 Global validation of EarthCARE Level-2 AOT products against AERONET/MAN
 Evaluation of EarthCARE multi-wavelengths AOD uncertainties
 Focussed regional assessments in the Arctic and/or extend the uncertainty evaluation toother suitable geophysical datasets (if applicable)

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

4. Evaluation of Radiation Products
BEFORE LAUNCH Preparation for evaluation of the EarthCARE radiation products by building
an interface between the EarthCARE data products and the 3D MYSTIC
radiative transfer model (RTM, Mayer, 2009; Emde et al., 2011) run within
the libRadtran environment (Mayer and Kylling, 2005; Emde et al., 2016).
 Test runs will be made both for 1D and 3D geometries using simulated
EarthCARE data, and the results will be compared with existing simulated
EarthCARE radiation products.
ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

Arve Kylling
aky@nilu.no7. Evaluation of Radiation Products
EARTHCARE DATA AVAILABLE
 Use the above-mentioned software together with combined EarthCARE ATLID, CPR and MSI data
products to simulate BBR data products.
 The simulated BBR data will be evaluated against the EarthCARE BBR data.
 Horizontal cloud variability and how that affects the uncertainty and variability in the BBR data will
be evaluated by comparing 1D and 3D RTM results.
 The evaluation will be done for selected locations in the Arctic where relevant surface data areavailable to give further constraints and for locations with large seasonal changes in surface albedo(snow/not snow).
ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop | 13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE
Science and Validation Workshop

13 – 17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy