ACROSS Mediterranean activities for EarthCAREvalidation and exploitation
Creators: name: Marinou, Eleni
name: Amiridis, Vassilis
name: Paschou, Peristera
name: Tsekeri, Alexandra
name: Tsikoudi, Ioanna
name: Voudouri, Kalliopi Artemis
name: Tsichla, Maria
name: Papachristopoulou, Kyriakoula
name: Koutsoupi, Iliana
name: Kouklaki, Dimitra
name: Giannakaki, Eleni
name: Balis, Dimitris
name: Michailidis, Konstantinos
name: Peletidou, Georgia
name: Nemuc, Anca
name: Nicolae, Doina
name: Mocnik, Grisa
name: Marenco, Franco
name: Kezoudi, Maria
name: Groß, Silke
name: Wirth, Martin
name: Mona, Lucia
name: Papagiannopoulos, Nikolaos
name: Ewald, Florian
name: Moisseev, Dmitri
name: Rosoldi, Marco
name: Mamouri, Rodanthi-Elisavet
name: Nisantzi, Argyro
name: Baars, Holger
name: Floutsi, Athena Augusta
name: Vakkari, Ville
name: O'Connor, Ewan J.
name: Kollias, Pavlos
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025

description: The ESA-JAXA EarthCARE satellite mission, launched in May 2024, delivers vertical profiles of aerosols, clouds, and precipitation properties together with radiative fluxes, utilizing an instrumental suit of a high spectral resolution lidar (ATLID), a Doppler cloud radar (CPR), a multi-spectral imager (MS), and a broadband radiometer (BBR). The simultaneous measurements will be utilized to improve our understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions and their radiative effects and to assess the representation of clouds, precipitation, aerosols, radiative fluxes, and heating rates in weather and climate models [1]. Due to the multi-sensor complexity/diversity and the innovation of its standalone and synergistic products, the EarthCARE mission has several validation challenges and strong sub-orbital synergies are needed to address Cal/Val and science objectives.

The Mediterranean basin provides a complex aerosol-cloud environment to exploit EarthCARE's capabilities. For the validation of the EarthCARE products in the Mediterranean, the ACROSS validation activity will be implemented, which would increase synergies towards achieving the following objectives: (i) Validate the EarthCARE aerosol and cloud products using state-of-the-art ground-based and airborne facilities, (ii) implement science studies targeting radiation closures, ACI, and data assimilation experiments, (iii) provide information for harmonizing and bridging past and future missions, to deliver Climate Data Records on aerosols and clouds. 

The rationale for ACROSS is based on lessons learned from the JATAC campaign implemented in the Atlantic [2]. Following the JATAC example, we target to implement 3 Intensive Observational Periods, including large-scale field experiments in the Mediterranean. The suborbital component follows the ASKOS [3] example. It includes (i) ACTRΙS Aerosol and Cloud remote sensing facilities and high-precision radiation measurements (in Potenza site in Italy, Cyprus sites, and Pyrgos, Thessaloniki, and PANGEA sites in Greece), (ii) radiation remote sensing measurements for closure studies, (iii) UAV in-situ flights collocated with the remote sensing measurements. ACROSS activities will be clustered with the ARCHIMEDES experimental activities in the Mediterranean, foreseen for late 2026 to late 2027. ACROSS seeks synergies with airborne activities. To this end, the first synergistic measurements were collected during the PERCUSION campaign in November 2024, during which HALO underpass 2 EarthCARE tracks close to the Thessaloniki and PANGEA sites. More airborne activities are envisioned in the Mediterranean area for Spring/September 2025/2026.

ACROSS is a collaborative effort between NOA, DLR, the University of Nova Gorica, CyI, INOE, FMI, CNR, PMoD, CUT, and TROPOS. ACROSS is supported by ACTRIS RI and the dataset collected will support assimilation experiments and science activities in the framework of the PANGEA4CalVal, ATMO-ACCESS, and CERTAINTY EC projects and collaborations within.

References:

·       Wehr T. et al., "The EarthCARE mission – science and system overview", Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 3581–3608, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3581-2023, 2023.

·       Fehr, T., et al., “The Joint Aeolus Tropical Atlantic Campaign 2021/2022 Overview—Atmospheric Science and Satellite Validation in the Tropics”, In Proceedings of the EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 April 2023. EGU23-7249.

·       Marinou, E. Et al., “An Overview of the ASKOS Campaign in Cabo Verde”. Environ. Sci. Proc., 26, 200. https://doi.org/10.3390/environsciproc2023026200, 2023.