PICASSO-CENA: combined active-passive sensing from space

Clouds and aerosols affect the Earth´s radiation budget by scattering incoming solar radiation back to space and absorbing outgoing thermal radiation. Current uncertainties in the nature and magnitude of these effects limit our understanding of the climate system and the potential for global climate change. PICASSO-CENA is a recently approved mission within NASA´s ESSP program which will obtain new measurements of clouds and aerosols to improve predictions of climate change and its impacts. PICASSO-CENA will fly in near formation with the already planned EOS PM satellite to provide a coincident set of data on aerosol and cloud properties, radiative fluxes, and atmospheric state essential for accurate quantification of aerosol and cloud radiative effects. The PICASSO-CENA payload consists of a two-wavelength polarization-sensitive lidar and three co-aligned passive instruments. Data from these four instruments will be used to measure the vertical distributions of aerosols and clouds in the atmosphere, as well as optical and physical properties of aerosols and clouds which influence the Earth´s radiation budget. Data from PICASSO-CENA and from EOS PM will be combined to provide improved determinations of surface and atmospheric radiative fluxes. PICASSO-CENA is being developed as a partnership between NASA and the French space agency CNES, and is planned to launch in early 2003