ACTRIS CH
Funding: SNF
1.1.2025 – 31.12.2028
https://www.actris.ch/
Atmospheric composition and processes play a key role in environmental and societal challenges such as air quality, adverse health impacts or climate change. ACTRIS-RI (Aerosols, Clouds and Trace gases Research Infrastructure; www.actris.eu) is a pan-European initiative to consolidate permanent and long-term observations of aerosols, clouds and trace gases at distributed National Facilities.
This is vital for producing observational data products of high quality and with sufficient spatial coverage, making them openly available for any kind of users and services, and providing a platform for researchers to address the challenges associated with these atmospheric constituents in an effective and comprehensive manner.
Scientific Objectives
In ACTRIS, the National Facilities are comprised of: i) Observational Platforms, which cover the classical measurements of atmospheric air pollutants and cloud properties at rural and background sites, and ii) Exploratory Platforms, which are additional facilities for answering more science-based questions, such as atmospheric simulation chambers and mobile installations.
At present, the Jungfraujoch is the only Swiss Observational Platform contributing to ACTRIS. This platform is a world-leading station, with unique observations of aerosols (by the Paul Scherrer Institute) and trace gases (by EMPA) in the lower free troposphere – continuous and with a long-lasting history.
Within ACTRIS-CH it is planned to complement these with continuous in-situ measurements of cloud microphysical properties (by ETHZ). Furthermore, a new joint Swiss Midland Observational Platform is planned within ACTRIS-CH, comprising the rural sites of: i) Payerne for aerosol in-situ, aerosol remote sensing and cloud remote sensing observations (PSI, MeteoSwiss, ETHZ), and ii) Beromünster for trace gases in-situ observations (EMPA). This Swiss Midland Platform will be complemented by auxiliary remote sensing of trace gases and cloud constituents at Bern (University of Bern). This comprehensive suite of in-situ and remote sensing observations will allow Switzerland to cover the full range of activities within ACTRIS and will further enhance its key role in high-quality ground-based atmospheric observations in Europe.
The ACTRIS European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) includes Exploratory Platforms to investigate key processes in the ambient atmosphere in order to better understand and interprete the measurements at the Observational Platforms. Switzerland participates with such an Exploratory Platform at PSI, through their atmospheric simulation chambers.
A third vital element of the ACTRIS ERIC are Topical Centers addressing calibration, quality assurance and method development. EMPA is a unit of ACTRIS-CiGAS (Topical Center for in-situ trace gas measurements), where it is in charge of the quality assurance for VOC (volatile organic carbon) measurements. Similarly, PMOD/WRC will contribute its world-class knowledge as the primary WMO reference center for AOD (aerosol optical depth) measurements to establish the traceability chain to ACTRIS-CARS (Topical center for aerosol remote sensing).