ICI (Ice Cloud Imager)

The Ice Cloud Imager ICI is a new scanning radiometer with 13 channels ranging from 183 GHz to 664 GHz. The placement of the channels on water vapor and oxygen lines in the submillimeter spectral range enables ICI to give information on the size of ice particles at different heights in the atmosphere as well as the amount of ice (ice water path). These data are important to improve numerical weather prediction, climate monitoring and atmospheric modeling. From 2021 on, ICI will be flying on the MetOp-SG series of satellites.

ICI is based on a number of earlier mission proposals:

The CloudIce Mission Proposal 2010

CloudIce was a mission proposal for ESAs Earth Explorer 8. ICI is technically very similar to the instrument that was proposed for CloudIce. The proposal was submitted to ESA on June 1, 2010.

• Proposal 2010-06-01 (pdf). By request of Astrium SAS, the technical sections 5 and 6 are not included in this public version of the proposal.
• Letter of Intent 2009-11-30 (pdf)
• Article: Mission Description (Buehler at al., 2012)
• Article: Mission Requirements (Buehler at al., 2007)
• Article: Retrieval Simulations (Jimenez at al., 2007)

The 2005 Cloud Ice Water Submillimeter Imaging Radiometer (CIWSIR) Proposal

CIWSIR was proposed in response to the ESA call for Earth Explorer Missions in Spring 2005.

• Full Proposal 2005-08-12 (pdf) This version is identical to the one submitted to ESA, except that one additional letter of support has been added, which had not arrived in time for the submission.
• Letter of intent 2005-04-29 (pdf)

The 2002 Cloud Ice Water Submillimeter Imaging Radiometer (CIWSIR) Proposal

An early precursor of ICI was the CIWSIR instrument proposed to the ESA Earth Explorer Opportunity Mission call in the winter 2001/2002.

• Full proposal 2002-02-13 (pdf)
• Presentation (pdf) at Eumetsat November 2002, given by Prof. Künzi
• Outline proposal 2002-09 (pdf)