From August 10 to September 10, the MAESTRO (Mesoscale organization of tropical convection) campaign was held in Cape Verde, coordinated by Sandrine Bony (LMD), Julien Delanoë (LATMOS) and Jean-Christophe Canonici (SAFIRE), and in which several members of the laboratory took part. This French campaign is part of the international ORCESTRA (Organized convection and EarthCare studies over the tropical atlantic) project, which aims to study the physical mechanisms involved in the organization of mesoscale convection over the Atlantic Ocean.

Building on the airborne measurements of the EUREC4A campaign, new experimental methods have been set up to study the structure of the convective atmosphere. The ATR-42, a French aircraft equipped with two Doppler radars and two lidars, can probe the atmosphere horizontally and vertically. It is accompanied by the German HALO aircraft, which flies in the upper troposphere, regularly dropping probes to characterize the dynamic and thermodynamic properties of the environment.

Furthermore, some of the campaign’s flights contributed to the calibration of the EarthCARE satellite, launched at the end of May 2024, whose first images were revealed this summer.