DORSY

The DORSY project is linked to the EarthCARE mission and founded by ESA, in partnership with McGill University (CA), University of Leicester (UK) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique-Laboratoire Atmospheres, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (CNRS-LATMOS, France).

ESA’s EarthCARE mission aims to advance our understanding of cloud-precipitation-aerosol interactions and contribute to the improvement of their representation in numerical models. One of the key EarthCARE mission requirements is to retrieve cloud, precipitation and aerosol properties along the vertical cross-section defined by the active sensors such that their top of atmosphere (TOA) radiative fluxes for each 10 kilometre-squared cell surrounding the cross-section can be estimated to within 10 Wm^-2.

An important step in achieving the EarthCARE objectives is the retrieval of cloud and precipitation properties, as well as vertical motion parameters from the different sensor carried by the satellite, taking particular advantage of the ATLID high-spectral resolution Lidar technique and the Cloud Profiling Radar Doppler capability.

In the DORSY project ECMWF will lead the development of the unified synergistic algorithm framework that will use observations from all three sensors on-board EarthCARE and will produce realistic estimates of atmospheric vertical cross-sections for a wide range of cloud, aerosols and precipitation conditions. These will be used to evaluate the IFS performance and improve the representation of the interaction between radiation and clouds-aerosol-precipitations in the model.