Archiv des Autors: exob-blog

ACTRIS becomes an ERIC – European Research Infrastructure

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We are pleased to welcome you our new research member at the Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology at the University of Cologne, ERIC!

The European Commission has legally recognized the ACTRIS project as a European research infrastructure consortium for atmospheric research and granted it the status of a consortium, shortly known as ERIC! ACTRIS stands for Aerosol, Clouds and Trace Gases Research Infrastructure -and represents an international network of high-quality observations of variable atmospheric constituents. Long-term ACTRIS observations are thus intended to help reduce uncertainties in the diagnosis and prediction of future climate. Across Europe, more than 100 institutions are involved in ACTRIS, which together form the largest multi-site atmospheric research infrastructure in the world. For its contribution to the ACTRIS project, the Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology will receive a total of 4.5 million euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for a period of five years. With this funding, the cloud observation platform JOYCE, which is located at the Foschungszentrum Jülich and is a central component of the CPEX-LAB of the Geoverbund ABC/J (Geo Science Union of the Universities Aachen, Bonn and Cologne and the Forschungszentrum Jülich), will be significantly expanded to continue to observe the life cycle of clouds. JOYCE data will be quality-controlled and continuously provided to the whole ACTRIS research community  So, ERIC, let’s get started!

Presentation of the FRM4Radar project at ESA

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In Spring 2023 we went to ESA ESRIN in Frescati, near Rome, to present the results of almost 5 year work in the FRM4Radar project. On behave of ESA in FRM4Radar we investigated the best practices to validate the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPA) on board of ESAs future satellite mission EarthCARE. Together with our international partners from Romania (INOE), Sweden (SMHI) and Finland (FMI) we installed new radars in Europa. Within the project we develop methods for data processing, radar quality control and cloud radar operation to best generate data sets for the validation of EarthCAREs CPR instrument.

ESA as the Euopean Space Agency is responsible to launch also research satellites, as for example EarthCARE or AEOLOS Foto 5. From time to time, we as scientists are involved in the designing process of satellite missions, the proposal of instrumentation, and the data processing and products generated. EarthCARE is still not launched and so the project was a nice opportunity to get involved into a ESA mission in the prelaunch phase.

The picture shows AEOLUS satellite

About ExObs Work

Hervorgehoben

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Welcome to the ExOb- web-blog! The ExOb group is us, Scientists, PhD-students, and students from the „Exploiting Observations in Meteorology“-group of the Institute for Geophysics and Meteorology of the University of Cologne. With this weblog, we would like to give you some insights into our working life besides preparing some exercises for students and correcting their homework. It is mending to show you how attractive (or perhaps sometimes also boring) life as a scientist can be.

The main focus of our research is observing the so-called atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). A phrase not many people know, however, potentially that more than 99% of all of us live in this atmospheric layer. The ABL is the meteorological term describing the atmosphere’s lowest 1-2 km. The layer links the surface to the atmosphere and many of processes, e.g. heat or pollution transport, that originate in the ABL to the atmosphere above, where they influence other processes, e.g. triggering cloud and precipitation formation.

The goal of the ExOb group is to perform research on new meteorological observation systems and investigate if and how these can improve our knowledge on the structure of the ABL, e.g. temperature, humidity and winds. Developing such methods can help us shed light on the physical processes in the ABL, such as turbulent fluxes or cloud and precipitation formation. Also, we investigate the impact of these observational methods on short-term weather forecasts and high-resolution re-analyses.

So we are happy to show you more about what we are doing soon. Feel free to visit also our working group homepage