The Earth, Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission is a European-Japanese joint satellite mission that aims to provide the global observations necessary to advance our understanding of clouds and aerosols and their radiative effect on the Earth’s climate system. Toward this goal, the EarthCARE satellite loads two active instruments, Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) and Atmospheric Lidar (ATLID), offering vertical profiles of clouds and aerosols, together with light drizzles, whose properties are extended horizontally using complementary measurement by Multispectral Imager (MSI). The properties thus obtained are then used to estimate outgoing shortwave and longwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere, which is evaluated against measurements taken by the fourth sensor, Broadband Radiometer (BBR). Such a “closure assessment” is used to give feedback to the microphysical property profiles and optimize them, if necessary, to offer consistent three-dimensional datasets of cloud-aerosol-precipitation-radiation fields. EarthCARE’s integrative global observation of clouds, aerosols and radiation with the new measurement capabilities, particularly with Doppler velocity, is expected to not only extend the A-Train measurement toward a longer-term climate record, but also to advance our perspective on the fundamental role that global clouds have within the climate system in the context of their relationships to dynamical processes and their interactions with aerosols and radiation. This review paper provides an overview of the mission, the satellite and its payloads, with a particular focus on the algorithm and products developed in Japan, and areas of scientific study expected to progress.
