Spacecraft seek climate clarity (BBC) {climate change/more & better data}

[eppur_se_muova]

By Jonathan Amos
BBC News science reporter

Some of the gaping holes that exist in our understanding of the Earth's atmosphere will be answered by two new satellites launched on Friday.

The Cloudsat and Calipso missions will study how clouds and aerosols (fine particles) form, evolve and affect our climate, the weather and air quality.

Scientists say knowledge gaps in such areas severely hamper their ability to forecast future climate change.

Different types of cloud, for example, can help cool or warm the planet.
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The new understanding obtained through the spacecraft will be fed into computer models, to improve their predictions. This should lead not just to better weather and air quality forecasts, but to reduced uncertainties in our expectations of future climate change.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4944058.stm

A fairly long and detailed article -- it is BBC, after all.