The European Commission (EC), European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), and the European Space Agency (ESA) coordinate the aerosol-cloud interaction cluster. The cluster brings together the CleanCloud and the CERTAINTY projects funded by Programme Horizon Europe, and the AIRSENSE project funded by ESA. The objective of the cluster is to ensure collaboration and synergies between these aerosol-cloud cluster projects in order to deliver state-of-the-science recommendations for policy.
The first of a series of meetings organized by EC/ESA took place on March 1st, 2024, in Brussels. The meeting brought together representatives of the three projects, as well as representatives from CINEA, DG-RTD, ESA-ESRIN, and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Several synergistic opportunities have been identified and discussed, including new observations, calibration/validation activities, model development, data storage, contribution to IPCC, and communication/dissemination activities.
On February 8 the NASA PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem) satellite was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The three instruments on PACE (OCI, HARP-2, SPEXone) will provide novel measurements on ocean color, clouds and aerosols. The PACE mission is of high relevance for the Horizon Europe project CleanCloud. Scientists in CleanCloud will use the aerosol observations from SPEXone (absorption, size, shape, composition) and cloud observations from HARP-2 (droplet size distribution) to constrain aerosol-cloud interactions in climate models. SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, CleanCloud consortium member, is the Principal Investigator Institute for SPEXone.
Prof. Nenes introduced CleanCloud to the ESA EarthCARE community at the ESA-JAXA Prelaunch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop, which took place on 13-17 November 2023, in Frascati (Rome), Italy.
