2,8,10,- 1Université Lille , Laboratoire d'Optique Atmosphérique, France (celine.cornet@univ-lille.fr)
- 2Institute of Earth Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
- 3Israel Space Agency, Tel Aviv, Israel
- 4Centre National d’Études Spatiales, Toulouse, France
- 5Laboratoire d'Aérologie, CNRS, Toulouse, France
- 6Asher Space Research Institute, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
- 7Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
- 8Department of Geosciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- 9Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques, Toulouse, France
- 10Reichman University, Herzliya, Israel
The space-borne C3IEL (Cluster for Cloud evolution, ClImatE and Lightning) mission, developed jointly by the French and the Israeli space agencies, 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 small satellites. Each 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 ; ~125 m at nadir) measuring in and near the water vapor absorption bands, a lightning imager (777.4 nm ; ~140 m at nadir; 10 ms time resolution) and three photometers (337, 391 and 777.4 nm; 50 μs time resolution).
The scientific objectives of the C3IEL mission will be first reminded. They consist in documenting the convective cloud development through their 3D evolution and their environment with the retrieval of water vapor surroundings the clouds. In addition, the lightning activitiy created by such clouds will be observed. The presentation will first remind the satellite train configuration, the different sensors of the mission and the innovative and different observational strategies that will be applied during daytime and nighttime. We will then provide an update on the expected observations and products.
Figure : Artist view of the C3IEL, Cluster for Cloud evolution, ClImatE and Lightning, mission. © CNES - Olivier Satteler.
How to cite: Cornet, C., Rosenfeld, D., Aviad, S., Cheymol, C., Defer, E., Deschamps, A., Frid, A., Gillot, L., Holodovsky, V., Kaidar, A., Navas, J.-B., Penide, G., Price, C., Ricard, D., Rimboud, A., Schechner, Y., Truffier, A., Yair, Y., and Zemb, A.: C3IEL, the Cluster for Cloud evolution ClImatE and Lightning Mission to Study Convective Clouds at High Spatial and Temporal Resolutions, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-11929, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-11929, 2026.
