ICARE

The ICARE Thematic Center was created in 2003 by CNES, CNRS, the Nord-Pas-De-Calais Regional Council, and the University of Lille, to provide various services to support the research community in fields related to atmospheric research, such as aerosols, clouds, radiation, water cycle, and their interactions. ICARE's initial emphasis is the production and distribution of remote sensing data derived from Earth observation missions from CNES, NASA, and EUMETSAT. One of ICARE's main components is the Data and Services Center, located at the University of Lille, which develops science algorithms and production codes, building on the expertise from various partner Science Computing Facilities, and distributes products to the users community.

Highlights

CALIPSO/CloudSat/EarthCARE Joint Workshop:
"The Role of Clouds and Aerosols in Weather and Climate"
18-22 June 2012, Paris, France

A joint workshop of the NASA/CNES CALIPSO, NASA/CSA CloudSat and the ESA/JAXA EarthCARE satellite missions will be held in Paris, France, 18-22 June 2012. CALIPSO is a joint NASA/CNES satellite mission and CloudSat a joint NASA/CSA satellite mission. They have been in operation since 2006 as part of the A-Train constellation of satellites. CALIPSO and CloudSat are collecting information about the vertical profiles of clouds and aerosols and contribute to improve our understanding of the role they play in regulating the Earth's climate. EarthCARE is a joint ESA/JAXA satellite mission scheduled for launch in 2015. It will collect global observations of clouds, aerosols and radiation with comparable instrumental capabilities. The workshop aims at reviewing the current status and future developments of these missions.

+ Read more on ESA web site

Release announcement for SODA products and documentation
January 2012

ICARE is pleased to announce the public release of the product suite developed as part of the SODA project, which originates from the collaboration between IPSL/LATMOS, NASA LaRC, and ICARE Data and Services Center:

SODA, the optical depth at the CALIPSO/CALIOP 333m native horizontal resolution,
SODA_5km, a 5km-averaged SODA product with a thin-cloud/aerosol separation,
SODA_L3, a 2.5-degree monthly mean SODA product

All products are publicly available and can be accessed by all ICARE registered users.

+ Go to the SODA pages for data access and documentation

CNES processes ScaRab data acquired onboard Megha-Tropiques satellite
December 2011

Image credit: CNES
ScaRaB First Image

CNES has processed the ScaRaB 4 channels to generate an example of level 1A geolocated data in the solar and thermal channels. ScaRaB (Scanner for Radiation Budget) is a broadband radiometer to measure shortwave and longwave outgoing fluxes at the top of the atmosphere and is one of the 3 radiometric instruments onboard the Megha-Tropiques satellite. The image shows one orbit of light reflected or emitted by the Earth and the atmosphere, passing over (from left to right) the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabian Sea, India, Malaysia, followed by night time data, then Eastern Africa and back again to the Arabian Peninsula.

+ Read more on the CNES Megha-Tropiques news page

+ Go to highlights archive