HAWC (High-altitude Aerosols, Water vapour and Clouds) is a planned Canadian mission that will provide critical data to support severe and extreme weather prediction, climate modelling, air quality forecasting, and monitoring of disasters, such as volcanic eruptions, wildfires and extreme precipitation.
HAWC consists of three innovative Canadian instruments and a Canadian satellite. The HAWC mission will be part of the international NASA-led Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) mission.

A major component of NASA's Earth System Observatory, AOS is an international multi-satellite mission with many instruments that will measure aerosols, clouds and water vapour in the atmosphere and how they interact to impact Earth's weather, air quality and climate. The data collected by HAWC and AOS will improve our ability to predict near-term weather events, long-term climatic conditions and air quality.

IMKASF contribution: Gabriele Stiller is in the science team, providing expertise on water vapour observations for the SHOW (Spatial Heterodyne Observations of Water) instrument.