Team Nuages

Scientific Themes

The primary objective of the Nuages team is to improve our understanding of the interactions between the physical and dynamic processes involved in the development, organization, and overall life cycle of convective systems. The team’s research activities are structured around three main axes:

1. Triggering and Organization of Convection: Contributions to atmospheric transport and circulations.
2. Cloud Physical Processes: Understanding, explaining, and predicting extreme events linked to convection.
3. Evolution of Cloud Systems in Relation to Climate Change.

The research conducted by the Nuages team relies on strong synergies between remote sensing, in situ observations (ground-based and space-based), and numerical modeling of the atmosphere.

Nuages news

The Nuages team boasts extensive expertise in the development and analysis of space-based observations. It leverages the new generation of geostationary satellites (such as MTG and GOES), which provide access to the life cycle, spatial organization, and electrical activity of convection. The team also relies on international airborne missions (such as EarthCARE) to study the microphysical properties of clouds. Several team members are actively involved in the design, preparation, product development, and/or exploitation of these missions.

The Nuages team is responsible for maintaining the operational readiness of the SAETTA 3D lightning detection network in Corsica, as part of the PCOA (Permanent Corsican Observatory for the Atmosphere).

Additionally, the team plays a key role in the development of the Meso-NH community model—one of the few models worldwide that explicitly and consistently represents the physical processes interacting within a cloud (including chemistry, aerosols, microphysics, radiation, and electricity). The ongoing porting of the code to GPUs significantly reduces the computational and energy costs of simulations. This advancement enables large-domain simulations at hectometric to decametric resolutions while implementing complex, numerically demanding physics that were previously unattainable for convective system simulations.

The team collaborates with national partners (such as CECI, CNRM, LaMP, LATMOS, LEGOS, LMD, LOA, LSCE, SPE, and others) and international partners (including the University of São Paulo, CAS, University of Catalonia, and more).

Projects