Speaker
Description
The HAWC (High-altitude Aerosols, Water vapour and Clouds) mission is a highly synergistic observing system that showcases three Canadian instruments: the Aerosol Limb Imager, the Thin Ice Clouds in the Far InfraRed Emissions (TICFIRE) instrument, and the Spatial Heterodyne Observations of Water instrument. The mission was selected as the Canadian contribution to NASA’s Atmospheric Observing System; a satellite constellation proposed by NASA that includes multiple instruments to monitor aerosol, clouds, and precipitation as part of the Earth System Observatory (ESO). The HAWC instruments will work together to obtain limb measurements of aerosol and water vapour with nadir measurements of radiation, thin ice cloud content, and cloud microphysical properties. These coordinated measurements between the instruments will help build a more comprehensive picture of the high-altitude aerosol, cloud, and water vapour in the atmosphere. The first half of this talk will provide an overview of HAWC and the science objectives of the mission. The second half will focus on SHOW and the status of the instrument and algorithm development. A planned sub-orbital demonstration and validation flight on the NASA ER-2 for the fall of 2023 will also be discussed.
