C3IEL, the Cluster for Cloud evolution ClImatE and Lightning mission to study convective clouds at high spatial and temporal resolutions
- 1Laboratoire d'Aérologie, CNRS, Toulouse, France
- 2Laboratoire d’Optique Atmosphérique, Université de Lille/CNRS, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France
- 3Institute of Earth Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
- 4Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, CNES, Toulouse, France
- 5Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Eng., Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
- 6Asher Space Research Institute, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
- 7Department of Geosciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- 8CNRM, Météo-France-CNRS, Toulouse, France
- 9Israel Space Agency, ISA, Tel Aviv, Israel
- 10Reichman University, Herzliya, Israel
The French-Israeli space-borne C3IEL (Cluster for Cloud evolution, ClImate and Lightning) mission aims at providing new insights on convective clouds, at high spatial and temporal resolutions, close to the scales of the individual convective eddies. The mission will simultaneously characterize the convective cloud dynamics, the interactions of clouds with the surrounding water vapor, and the lightning activity.
The C3IEL mission consists in a short-baseline (~150 km) train of 2 synchronized nano-satellites. Each nano-satellite carries a visible camera (670 nm) for cloud imagery at a spatial resolution of ~20 meters, near-infrared water vapor imagers (1.04, 1.13 et 1.37 µm) measuring in and near the water vapor absorption bands, and a lightning imager (777.4 nm) and at least one photometer (777.4 nm).
The scientific objectives of the C3IEL mission, i.e. documenting the 3D evolution of the clouds’ surface, entrainment of water vapor, and electrification, will be first reminded. Then, we will introduce the satellite train configuration, the different sensors of the mission and the innovative and different observational strategy that will be applied during daytime and nighttime. We will then detail the expected observations and products, including the ones related to lightning.
How to cite: Defer, E., Cornet, C., Rosenfeld, D., Cheymol, C., Deschamps, A., Frid, A., Gillot, L., Holodovsky, V., Kaidar, A., Peroni, R., Price, C., Ricard, D., Rimboud, A., Schechner, Y., Shmaryahu, A., and Yair, Y.: C3IEL, the Cluster for Cloud evolution ClImatE and Lightning mission to study convective clouds at high spatial and temporal resolutions, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-13989, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-13989, 2024.
