earthcarekit 0.5.0

A Python package to simplify working with EarthCARE satellite data.

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A Python package to simplify working with EarthCARE satellite data.

⚠️ Project Status: In Development

This project is still under active development. It is not yet feature-complete, and parts of the user documentation are missing or incomplete. Use at your own risk and expect breaking changes. Feedback and contributions are welcome!

• Documentation: https://tropos-rsd.github.io/earthcarekit/
• Source code: https://github.com/TROPOS-RSD/earthcarekit
• Examples: https://github.com/TROPOS-RSD/earthcarekit/tree/main/examples/notebooks
• Feature requests and bug reports: https://github.com/TROPOS-RSD/earthcarekit/issues

What is earthcarekit?

earthcarekit is an open-source Python package that provides comprehensive and flexible tools for downloading, reading, analysing and visualizing data from ESA (European Space Ageny) and JAXA's (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) joint satellite mission EarthCARE (Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer, Wehr et al., 2023). The goal of this software is to support the diverse calibration/validation (cal/val) and scientific efforts related to the mission and provide easy-to-use functions for new EarthCARE data users.

You can find more info about the package, setup, and usage in the documentation.

Contact

The package is developed and maintained by Leonard König at Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS). For questions, suggestions, or bug reports, please create an issue or reach out via email.

Acknowledgments

Colormap definitions for calipso and chiljet2 were adapted from the exellent ectools repository by Shannon Mason (ECMWF).

Citation

If you use this software in your work, please cite it. We recommend citing the specific version you are using, which you can select on Zenodo.

Alternatively, if you want to cite version-independent use:

@software{koenig_2025_earthcarekit,
  author       = {König, Leonard and
                  Floutsi, Athena Augusta and
                  Haarig, Moritz and
                  Baars, Holger and
                  Wandinger, Ulla},
  title        = {earthcarekit: A Python package to simplify working
                   with EarthCARE satellite data
                  },
  month        = aug,
  year         = 2025,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.16813294},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16813294},
}

or in text:

König, L., Floutsi, A. A., Haarig, M., Baars, H., & Wandinger, U. (2025). earthcarekit: A Python package to simplify working with EarthCARE satellite data. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16813294

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License (see LICENSE file or https://opensource.org/license/mit). See also third-party licenses listed in the documentation.

References

• Wehr, T., Kubota, T., Tzeremes, G., Wallace, K., Nakatsuka, H., Ohno, Y., Koopman, R., Rusli, S., Kikuchi, M., Eisinger, M., Tanaka, T., Taga, M., Deghaye, P., Tomita, E., and Bernaerts, D.: The EarthCARE mission – science and system overview, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 3581–3608, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3581-2023, 2023.