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Measurements in snow conditions performed in the past were rarely initiated and best suited for pure and extremely detailed quantification of microphysical properties of a series of microphysical parameters, needed for accretion modelling. Within the European ICE GENESIS project, a considerable effort of natural snow measurements has been made during winter 2020/21. Instrumental means, both in-situ and remote sensing were deployed on the ATR-42 aircraft, as well as on the ground (ground station at ‘Les Eplatures’ airport in the Swiss Jura Mountains with ATR-42 overflights). Snow clouds and precipitation in the atmospheric column were sampled with the aircraft, whereas ground based and airborne radar systems allowed extending the observations of snow properties beyond the flight level chosen for the in situ measurements.

The High Altitude Ice Crystals (HAIC) Sub-Project 3 (SP3) focuses on the detection of cloud regions with high ice water content (IWC) from current available remote sensing observations of space-based geostationary and low-orbit missions. The SP3 activities are aimed at supporting operationally the two up-coming HAIC flight campaigns (the first one in May 2015 in Cayenne, French Guyana; the second one in January 2016 in Darwin, Australia) and ultimately provide near real-time cloud monitoring to Air Traffic Management. More in detail the SP3 activities focus on the detection of high IWC from space-borne geostationary Meteosat daytime imagery, explore the synergy of concurrent multi-spectral multiple-technique observations from the low-orbit A-Train mission to identify specific signatures in high IWC cloud regions, and finally develop a satellite-based nowcasting tool to track and monitor convective systems over the Tropical Atlantic.