The second Megha-Tropiques validation/preparation field programme funded by CNES, the French space Agency, took place in Gan (the Maldives) from 15/11/11 to 15/12/12. During that month the team, including people from LATMOS, LaMP, LMD, LaCy, Legos and SAFIRE (operating the F20 aircraft), sampled some very exciting convective systems over the Indian Ocean aiming to better understand mechanisms which initiate precipitation. The underlying idea was to be able to characterise the ice part above rain in order to develop and validate parameterisations for Megha-Tropiques rain retrieval technique, BRAIN. The French Falcon 20 took on board several in-situ microphysical probes (FSSP, 2DS, CPI, PIP, 2DP, Nevzorov) which were dedicated to sampling hydrometeors (deriving ice particles distribution as a function of their size and shape) and quantify total water content. In addition to that, the airborne 95GHz cloud radar RASTA (some quicklooks are available here, under the data link: http://rali.projet.latmos.ipsl.fr/ ) was operating in the very novel six-beam configuration allowing one to retrieve microphysical ice-cloud properties and 3D dynamics of clouds.It was therefore possible to cover ice properties from the fine scale to regional scale by combining these measurements. The team also made the most of the deployed instruments from our US/Japanese colleagues for the DYNAMO (Dynamics of the Madden-Julian Oscillation) campaign, while the F20 was flying inside the polarimetric radar area. A successful collaboration with the NOAA P3 aircraft on 8^th December 2011 saw, for the first time, some convective systems sampled simultaneously by ground-based radars (SPOL-SMARTR-KAZR), airborne radars at 95GHz and 10GHz and in-situ measurements. For more information, Please contact Dr Julien Delanoe.

Our two long lasting collaborators, Thomas Fiolleau and Philippe Chambon who both achieved their PHDs in the MT French group are now heading for postdoctoral experiences. Thomas has recently joined the CEMADEN, in Brazil where he works on the fusion of multisource observations of convective systems in a operational forecasting environment. There he is working with Drs Carlos Frederico Angelis and Luis Augusto Machado. Philippe is about to join the NASA Goddard to investigate the assimilation techniques developped in the GPM framework. He will work there with Drs Arthur Hou and Sarah Zhang.

Thomas's contribution to the MT mission corresponds to the MCS tracking and compositing products  and Philippe developped and implemented the TAPEER-BRAIN product, our 1degre/1day surface accumulated rainfall (and errors estimates) product.

We all wish you a fantastic experience in your respective new and exciting work enviroment !