The third EarthCARE Science and Validation workshop, open to the scientific community, will be held in Oxford from 8 to 12 June 2026. The workshop will be dedicated to presenting and discussing EarthCARE science topics and results and evaluating the validation achievements and the assessment of the product quality .

The EarthCARE mission, which focuses on the synergistic use of four instruments (the ATLID lidar, the CPR Doppler Cloud radar, the MSI multispectral imager, and the BBR radiometer), aims to contribute to a better understanding of climate change and, in particular, to study how the radiation budget is influenced by the physical and microphysical properties of clouds and aerosols at the global level. Thanks to the new knowledge generated by the EC mission, both the representation of the main physical processes that regulate clouds, aerosols, and precipitation and their interactions will be improved, as well as the performance of climate models used to estimate future climate projections.

The validation of EC products plays a fundamental role in assessing the quality of atmospheric parameters obtained from satellite sensor measurements.

ENEA contributes to the validation of EC products through measurements carried out at the Lampedusa Climate Observation Station as part of the EC-ValMed.it project, funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and coordinated by CNR-ISAC, which, together with CNR-ISMAR, conducts measurements at the other site involved in the project, Rome-Tor Vergata. Preliminary studies have confirmed that Lampedusa's geographic characteristics and location make it an ideal site for validating satellite observations based on data from the ENEA Station, which  participates in international measurement networks and European research infrastructures (ACTRIS, ICOS) with its cutting-edge instrumentation.

The contributions that the Laboratory Models and Measurements for Air Quality and Climate Observations will present at the workshop concern:

• the results of the comparison between the cloud properties obtained by EC during some passes over Lampedusa and from remote sensing measurements within the ACTRIS network with the poster “Evaluation of EarthCARE Synergistic Cloud Retrievals Using Ground-Based Observations at the Lampedusa Station” presented by Giandomenico Pace (co-authors: Daniela Meloni, Virginia Ciardini, Lorenzo De Silvestri, Tatiana Di Iorio, Alcide di Sarra, Francesco Monteleone, Matteo Picchiani, Damiano Sferlazzo);

• the validation of the columnar and vertically resolved aerosol properties, investigating different EC products both at Rome Tor Vergata and Lampedusa sites with the poster “Validation of EarthCARE Level 2 aerosol optical depth and vertical profiles by means of ground-based measurements at Rome and Lampedusa Italian sites” presented by Daniela Meloni (co-authors: Elisa Adirosi, Sabina Angeloni, Luca Baldini, Francesca Barnaba, Alessandro Bracci, Monica Campanelli, Davide Dionisi, Tatiana Di Iorio, Marco Di Paolantonio, Alcide di Sarra, Gianluigi Liberti, Giovanni Giuliano, Lorenza Masi, Giandomenico Pace, Stefano Sensi, Damiano Sferlazzo, Matteo Picchiani);
• a focus on the aerosol validation at Lampedusa Station alone with the poster “Validation of EarthCARE aerosol products from ATLID and MSI with remote sensing measurements at the Lampedusa Station for Climate Observations, Italy”, presented by Daniela Meloni (co-authors: Tatiana Di Iorio, Giandomenico Pace, Fabrizio Anello, Lorenzo De Silvestri, Alcide di Sarra, Francesco Monteleone, Salvatore Piacentino, Damiano Sferlazzo).

A further contribution will concern the comparison of cloud and precipitation properties over Italy with several ground-based reference sites, including Lampedusa Station with the poster “Ground-Based Validation of EarthCARE Level 2 Cloud and Precipitation Products over Italy” which will be presented by CNR-ISAC colleague Elisa Adirosi (co-authors: Sabina Angeloni, Stefano Sensi, Giampietro Casasanta, Alessandro Bracci, Francesca Barnaba, Monica Campanelli, Mario Montopoli, Gianluigi Liberti, Giandomenico Pace, Daniela Meloni, Pamela Trisolino, Damiano Sferlazzo, Tatiana Di Iorio, Virginia Ciardini, Dimitri Moiseev, Matteo Picchiani, Luca Baldini).