British-built satellite will improve flood and blizzard predictions

A satellite that can peer inside of clouds to improve storm forecasts and climate predictions, is set to launch next week.

EarthCare, which was built in Britain, will be the first satellite to measure how much water is in clouds, how they form from aerosols and particles in the atmosphere and how much sunlight they reflect and absorb.

For the first time, scientists will be able to see how fast rain and snow falls, which will help to improve the prediction of winter rain and snowstorms, helping people prepare for flooding or blizzards.

It will also monitor how clouds reflect and absorb sunlight, which is crucial for modelling the climate accurately.

The project has taken more than 30 years to get off the ground after being proposed by the University of Reading in 1993.

Robin Hogan, a professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Reading, said: “EarthCare’s first global measurements of rainfall speeds will help estimate rain rates from space more accurately, but also the average size of raindrops in different weather systems, giving us new insights into the different processes responsible for rain formation, which will be very valuable for improving weather and climate models.

“EarthCare’s additional measurements of how fast the snowflakes are falling in different situations should make our estimates of snowfall rates more accurate than any previous satellite. This will be very valuable for improving weather forecasts in winter.

He added: “It’s going to be so exciting. Turn on the radar, we’re going to see what the atmosphere is really doing and it’s going to be global.”

Although clouds are crucial for modelling weather and climate, their height and density are tricky to determine from the ground.

By placing a radar and pulsing laser in space, scientists can discover the properties of different types of cloud formations which can then be plugged into forecasting and climate models.

Clouds permanently cover around two thirds of the planet, bouncing back sunlight and trapping so they have a major impact on Earth’s temperature, but there is currently a critical gap in climate models because so little is known about their impact.

Anthony Illingworth, the emeritus professor of Atmospheric Physics at Reading, who first conceived the mission, said: “Without any clouds the Earth would be at about -15C so to explain the present temperatures we need observations of the profile of the clouds and the only way to get the profile is to look down from space.

“Data from EarthCare will be invaluable in helping us observe the precise mechanisms involved in how clouds, aerosols and dust reflect, emit and absorb heat and light energy.”

The satellite, which was built by Airbus in Stevenage, is scheduled for launch on Tuesday evening on board a Falcon9 SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg, California.

It contains four instruments. A radar will be able to penetrate through thick clouds while the Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) instrument will monitor small clouds and can pick up dust, aerosols and smoke in the air.

A third instrument will take visible images of the clouds while a fourth will monitor how much heat from the Sun is being reflected or trapped by clouds.

Some experts are concerned that as pollution is cleaned up, fewer clouds will be seeded, causing the planet to warm more quickly.

Thorsten Fehr, the ESA EarthCare mission scientist, said: “Currently, clouds have a cooling effect on the climate, but this may decrease in the future leading to an additional warming effect.

“Air quality concerns mean we can expect a decrease in anthropogenic aerosols in the future, which could reduce clouds’ cooling ability, contributing to a warming climate.

“[With EarthCare] we will literally be able to see inside the clouds to get a better understanding of their behaviour and structure, and how they form and dissipate, improving our understanding of clouds and their impact on climate.”

The European Space Agency has led the project alongside the UK Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Some 23 institutions across Britain are involved in the mission including University of Oxford, Imperial and the National Centre for Atmosphere Science.