Is NCAS "fact-checking" UKRI-NERC? 🤔
06.03.2026 23:43
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Is NCAS "fact-checking" UKRI-NERC? 🤔
Our students on the ECMWF Physical Parametrization training course had a short break during the radiation computer practical yesterday to study the dusty sunset over Reading! (3/3)
...and yesterday at 14.28 UTC. EarthCARE cannot penetrate thick clouds of course (shown in grey, leading to some gaps in EarthCARE aerosol optical depth) but this is an excellent demonstration of the potential to use EarthCARE to evaluate and improve our aerosol forecasts. (2/3)
Huge Saharan dust plume over Europe yesterday and today! My colleague Peter Hill at ECMWF used EarthCARE lidar retrievals to evaluate CAMS forecasts of extinction coefficient, showing that the vertical structure and optical depth of the plume were well captured both yesterday at 01.44 UTC... (1/3)
Do submit an abstract to the EarthCARE Science Workshop in Oxford this June, deadline tomorrow! It will be an extremely stimulating meeting as we start to explore how EarthCARE can inform the science of clouds, aerosols, radiation, weather, climate and more: www.earthcare-science-validation-2026.org
NERC's sudden decision to cease funding for FAAM by the end of this month is bad news for the EarthCARE satellite - in this letter members of the EarthCARE Quality Working Group (of which I am a member) explain why: www.met.reading.ac.uk/~swrhgnrj/fa...
Delighted to be in beautiful Leipzig before the EarthCARE Quality Working Group at TROPOS! Just taking a moment for a brief genuflection before the meeting...
Excellent statement from RMetS questioning the decision to cease funding for the FAAM aircraft: www.rmets.org/news/stateme...
Great result for progressive politics in the UK. If the first law of politics is "learn to count" (LBJ), the 2nd has to be "don't abandon your base". Labour's response to the far-right threat has been to lurch to the right - who'd have guessed this wouldn't work? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
I'm currently writing up a paper in which we used FAAM underflights of EarthCARE to evaluate and refine its retrievals of cloud properties and updrafts, crucial to building trust in EarthCARE's global measurements of clouds and their impact on climate. This is a bad day for UK science. (2/2)
Crazy to axe the world-class FAAM aircraft - a big blow to observational atmospheric research in the UK. I've used data from the Hercules and then its successor the FAAM since starting my PhD in 1995 - there's no substitute for getting right inside a cloud to find out what's really going on! (1/2)
Amazing image of the properties of marine stratocumulus clouds begin modified by ships underneath them, as revealed by EarthCARE's Multi-Spectral Imager in the North Pacific. Full story at earth.esa.int/eogateway/su...
This new video from @climateadam.bsky.social is even more brilliant than usual - insightful and hilarious 🧐🤣❤️
www.youtube.com/watch?v=py0X...
Job opportunity! 3.5-year postdoc at the Dept of Meteorology, University of Reading, to improve convective storms in high resolution models using #EarthCARE and other data, including close collaboration with both ECMWF and the Met Office - deadline 27 February: jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...
Save the date! The next #EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop will be 8-12 June 2026 in the beautiful city of Oxford, deadline for abstracts is 27 February: www.earthcare-science-validation-2026.org
You can catch up with all the EarthCARE web stories at www.earthcarescience.net/web-stories - there were 21 articles in 2025, and will be many more in 2026!
The left column shows various EarthCARE measurements of a deep nimbostratus cloud over Ontario. The right column shows comparisons between EarthCARE’s estimates and in situ aircraft measurements. The bottom two rows confirm that the terminal fall speed of snowflakes is fairly constant whereas the vertical motion of the air fluctuates rapidly and can be estimated well from EarthCARE, the first time this has been possible from space.
There have now been 100 aircraft under-flights of #EarthCARE, each providing invaluable information to calibrate and validate the data products. This example shows very good agreement between EarthCARE and aircraft vertical air motion in nimbostratus. Full article here: earth.esa.int/eogateway/su...
Here is the wider context: satellite observations on the left and the two model versions on the right, visible imagery on top and thermal infrared on the bottom. The eye is stubbornly too wide in the model: what should we change in the model to improve this?
Doppler velocity (positive up) through Hurricane Humberto: top is EarthCARE, middle is the ECMWF 9-km model and bottom is the ECMWF 4.4-km model.
Never before have we been able to measure vertical velocities from space: on the top is EarthCARE showing falling rain and snow (blue) but in the eye-wall the cloud particles are lofted up (red). The next two panels show the 9- and 4.4-km models with the 4.4-km starting to capture the updrafts!
Radar reflectivity through Hurricane Humberto: top is EarthCARE, middle is the ECMWF 9-km model and bottom is the ECMWF 4.4-km model.
In this ECMWF blog post, Mark Fielding compares model simulations at 9- and 4.4-km resolution with #EarthCARE radar observations of Hurricane Humberto, which was sampled right through its eye on 28 September 2025: www.ecmwf.int/en/about/med...
The paper describing the synergy retrievals is here: amt.copernicus.org/articles/16/...
Check out in particular the video explaining how the synergy retrievals are evaluated by "radiative closure": www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d_k...
All EarthCARE data have now been released! www.esa.int/Applications...
First day of the EarthCARE Science & Validation workshop on the beautiful University of Tokyo campus! Takuji Kubota described today's release of all the Japanese products, including those using the synergy of 3 & 4 instruments.
Nice article about the various online and offline visualization and analysis tools that are available for exploring EarthCARE data - thanks to Eleni Marinou (@elmarinou.bsky.social) who coordinates the development of these tools! earth.esa.int/eogateway/ne...
Exciting week next week with the release of the full tranche of #EarthCARE products, including those using 3 and 4 of the instruments in synergy! JAXA held a media briefing earlier today and I explained why this is important (48mins in). www.youtube.com/live/9375tqa...
Aircraft contrails are contributing to global warming, but the balance between their solar and infrared effects is uncertain. EarthCARE's combination of instruments, particularly its high resolution 3-view broadband radiometer, is perfectly placed to measure them! earth.esa.int/eogateway/su...
This ECMWF training course is a great opportunity to learn about how physical processes are represented in weather and climate models, free for anyone in an ECMWF member state. It runs 2-6 March 2026 and the deadline for applications is 30 November. events.ecmwf.int/event/496/
Nice paper, thanks! ECMWF web article coming soon comparing our observations of Humberto with simulations by the IFS at high resolution.
