Présentation des conditions de vent en altitude prévues pour le vol de CLIMAT

The meteorology officer reports to the mission manager regarding the high-altitude wind conditions forecast for the CLIMAT flight, and hence the most appropriate mission profile. Allowing for any safety considerations relating to the flight, the mission manager then announces a proposed launch date and time to his team of scientists. To maximise the flight altitude and duration, balloon launches for the various missions (PILOT, CLIMAT and CARMEN/CASOLBA) must be planned to coincide with stratospheric wind inversions. To enable this, the research team consulted data from satellites and radiosonde balloons in search of the ideal meteorological conditions. The mission gondolas, lifted by helium-filled balloons, were launched to an altitude of several tens of kilometres in April 2017. Measurements are more economical and simpler to perform using balloons than using satellites. Balloons are able to gather data that would be impossible to collect using ground-based telescopes, as the Earth's atmosphere partially blocks cosmic radiation.