The collaboration between the European Space Agency and Japan's JAXA space agency is scheduled to launch Tuesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg base.
The troposphere starts at around eight kilometres above the polar regions, but near the equator it begins at around 18 kilometres up. This means that clouds affect the climate differently depending on their altitude and latitude. EarthCARE will become the first satellite to measure the vertical and horizontal distribution of clouds, she told a press conference.The Lidar instrument will use a laser pulse to measure both clouds and aerosols, which are tiny particles in the atmosphere such as dust, pollen or human-emitted pollutants like smoke or ash.The satellite's radar will pierce through the clouds to measure how much water they contain.
The amount of solar radiation that gets past Earth's clouds could therefore be crucial to understanding and mitigating the impact of human-driven global warming.