Earth Radiation Mission Program

ESA Earth Explorer Core mission concept designed to determine global vertical profiles of cloud and aerosol characteristics for numerical modelling of radiative-energy divergence, aerosol–cloud–radiation interaction, vertical water and ice transport, and cloud–precipitation interactions. Its snapshot approach combined a nadir radar and lidar with a broadband radiometer and multispectral imager, and the concept was not selected in 1999 although its science and technology informed later EarthCARE and proposed European–Japanese radiation-mission work.