Published on 6 July 2024
Offering a foretaste of what’s to come once it is fully commissioned, ESA’s EarthCARE satellite has returned the first images from its broadband radiometer instrument. These initial images offer a tantalising glimpse into the intricacies of our planet’s energy balance – a delicate balance that governs our climate.
Earth’s energy balance accounts the amount of energy it receives from the Sun, solar radiation, and the amount of thermal radiation that Earth emits back out to space.
Influenced by numerous factors, including clouds, aerosols and greenhouse gases, this balance is vital for maintaining Earth’s relatively stable temperatures.
Although it is well-known that human activities are increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, aerosols also enter the atmosphere from industrial plants, traffic and agricultural practices, as well as from natural sources.
Global temperatures are rising, so understanding and monitoring the radiation balance is crucial for studying and addressing climate-related issues, which is why ESA, together with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, built the EarthCARE satellite.
EarthCARE in detail
EarthCARE has been designed to measure various aspects of our atmosphere to help us understand how clouds and aerosols reflect incoming solar energy back out to space and how they trap outgoing infrared energy.
This information is crucial to understand climate change and to predict the rate at which clouds and aerosols could lose their current overall cooling effect in the future.
Remarkably, despite only being launched a little over a month ago, EarthCARE has already returned the first data from its cloud profiling radar.
And now, its broadband radiometer is also demonstrating its impressive capabilities.