Over a period of more than three months, scientists have collected data on cloud formation in the Atlantic with the HALO research aircraft, and repeatedly performed flights underneath the EarthCARE satellite for joint measurements. This campaign, called PERCUSION, was led by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and the German Aerospace Center and has now come to an end.
Will the Cape Verde Islands become wetter or drier in the future? Will it rain more or less in the Sahel? The answers to questions like these depend heavily on how the tropical rain belt might change in the future. Known to experts as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), this band of clouds stretches around the Earth near the equator – but it has a surprisingly complex and variable inner life. The PERCUSION measurement campaign led by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, DLR) investigated the diverse processes in the Atlantic ITCZ with a focus on the mesoscale – in other words, it considered phenomena bigger than individual clouds, but smaller than large-scale weather patterns. The campaign was part of the more extensive ORCESTRA expedition and has now concluded with a final workshop in Hamburg.
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