Persistent EarthCARE underflight studies of the ITCZ and organized convection (PERCUSION): contribution to EarthCARE validation

Groß, Silke; Ewald, Florian; Stevens, Bjorn; Wirth, Martin; Dekoutsidis, Georgios; Ehrlich, André; Kouklaki, Dimitra; Krüger, Konstantin; Rosenburg, Sophie; Volkmer, Lea; von Bismark, Jonas; Hirsch, Lutz; Luebke, Anna E.; Marinou, Eleni; Mayer, Bernhard; Pinol Sole, Montserrat; Wendisch, Manfred; Windmiller, Julia; Amiridis, Vassilis; Koopman, Rob; Kubota, Takuji; Rapp, Markus

doi:10.5194/amt-19-3933-2026

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-19-3933-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Early results from EarthCARE (AMT/ACP/GMD inter-journal SI)

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-19-3933-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

Research article

|

16 Jun 2026

Research article |

| 16 Jun 2026

Persistent EarthCARE underflight studies of the ITCZ and organized convection (PERCUSION): contribution to EarthCARE validation

Silke Groß, Florian Ewald, Bjorn Stevens, Martin Wirth, Georgios Dekoutsidis, André Ehrlich, Dimitra Kouklaki, Konstantin Krüger, Sophie Rosenburg, Lea Volkmer, Jonas von Bismark, Lutz Hirsch, Anna E. Luebke, Eleni Marinou, Bernhard Mayer, Montserrat Pinol Sole, Manfred Wendisch, Julia Windmiller, Vassilis Amiridis, Rob Koopman, Takuji Kubota, and Markus Rapp

Data sets

WALES lidar data from the PERCUSION field campaign for the Sal period Version 1.2 Martin Wirth https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15527242

WALES lidar data from the PERCUSION field campaign for the Barbados period Version 1.2 Martin Wirth and Silke Groß https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17153149

WALES lidar data from the PERCUSION field campaign for the Oberpfaffenhofen period Version 1.2 Martin Wirth and Silke Groß https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17153625

MIRA cloud radar data from the PERCUSION field campaign (Level 2) Florian Ewald and Silke Groß https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17910007

Broadband solar and thermal-infrared, upward and downward irradiance measured by BACARDI during the PERCUSION field campaign Anna E. Luebke et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18999496

MIRA cloud radar data from A-Train underflights with HALO (Radar reflectivity) Florian Ewald https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19317830

WALES lidar data from A-Train underflights with HALO (Backscatter coefficient) Florian Ewald and Martin Wirth https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19318124

Short summary

In May 2024 the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission EarthCARE was launched. A similar payload as on the satellite was set up on the German research aircraft HALO, and deployed during an extensive measurement campaign to validated the satellite. We present our instrumentation, the measurements, and its potential for the validation of EarthCARE. We show first validation results and assessments of the EarthCARE data quality.