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03 DEC. 2025
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True to its promise, the European Space Agency’s EarthCARE satellite is now being used to calculate directly how clouds and aerosols influence Earth’s energy balance – the all-important balance that regulates our climate. In doing so, EarthCARE is poised to sharpen the accuracy of climate models, the very tools that guide global climate policy and action.
ESA’s EarthCARE Mission Manager, Bjoern Frommknecht, added, “On 1 December, during the second joint workshop bringing together European, Canadian and Japanese scientists, the complete suite of EarthCARE Level-2 data products was released to the public for the first time. This follows the release of Level-1 data back in January and some of the Level-2 data in March.
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Earth radiation budget
ESA’s EarthCARE Mission Manager, Bjoern Frommknecht, added, “On 1 December, during the second joint workshop bringing together European, Canadian and Japanese scientists, the complete suite of EarthCARE Level-2 data products was released to the public for the first time. This follows the release of Level-1 data back in January and some of the Level-2 data in March.
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EarthCARE over a typhoon
Launched in May 2024, EarthCARE – an ESA Earth Explorer mission developed in partnership with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) – carries four specialised instruments designed to take different measurements of clouds and aerosols simultaneously.
This synergy is key: by combining these observations, EarthCARE can work out important cloud properties such as how much water they contain and the size of the cloud particles. This, in turn, can be used to improve how these aspects are represented in climate models, paving the way for more reliable climate projections.
The animation below presents a sequence of measurements acquired by EarthCARE over Typhoon Ragasa near the Philippines on 20 September 2025, and illustrates ‘radiative closure’ – one of the mission’s key science goals.
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EarthCARE’s instruments work in synergy to improve climate models
ESA’s EarthCARE Mission Manager, Bjoern Frommknecht, added, “On 1 December, during the second joint workshop bringing together European, Canadian and Japanese scientists, the complete suite of EarthCARE Level-2 data products was released to the public for the first time. This follows the release of Level-1 data back in January and some of the Level-2 data in March.
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EarthCARE improves estimates of the influence of clouds on Earth’s energy balance
ESA’s EarthCARE Mission Manager, Bjoern Frommknecht, added, “On 1 December, during the second joint workshop bringing together European, Canadian and Japanese scientists, the complete suite of EarthCARE Level-2 data products was released to the public for the first time. This follows the release of Level-1 data back in January and some of the Level-2 data in March.
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EarthCARE over Europe
ESA’s EarthCARE Mission Manager, Bjoern Frommknecht, added, “On 1 December, during the second joint workshop bringing together European, Canadian and Japanese scientists, the complete suite of EarthCARE Level-2 data products was released to the public for the first time. This follows the release of Level-1 data back in January and some of the Level-2 data in March.
ESA’s EarthCARE Mission Manager, Bjoern Frommknecht, added, “On 1 December, during the second joint workshop bringing together European, Canadian and Japanese scientists, the complete suite of EarthCARE Level-2 data products was released to the public for the first time. This follows the release of Level-1 data back in January and some of the Level-2 data in March.
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