Important Atmospheric Research
Research infrastructures that are strategically and politically important for Europe are on the roadmap of the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures). These include IAGOS (In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System) for research into the Earth's atmosphere - coordinated by Forschungszentrum Jülich together with CNRS in France.
In future, the ESFRI Landmarks will be reviewed every five years to assess their long-term development, identify potential problems and analyse their performance and impact on the European research infrastructure ecosystem.
The first evaluation of IAGOS was completed in June 2024. The summary states: "IAGOS is an example of a sustainable and impactful research infrastructure that not only promotes scientific understanding, but also supports policy-making and public awareness." The support of the host research organisations - Forschungszentrum Jülich - is cited as an indispensable condition for the success of IAGOS.
"IAGOS has developed into a research infrastructure of international standing and occupies a central position in the global system for observing the atmosphere. Our freely and openly accessible measurement data is currently used by around 300 organisations worldwide - and IAGOS naturally hopes that our data will be used for even more research in the future," says atmospheric researcher Prof Andreas Petzold, head of the Global Observation group at the Jülich Institute of Tropospheric Research (ICE-3), coordinator of IAGOS Germany and member of the IAGOS Board of Directors.
At IAGOS, devices on board of commercial aircrafts around the world measure long-lived carbon dioxide, but also short-lived greenhouse gases such as ozone, water vapour and methane as well as the reactive trace gases carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. The data helps researchers to gain new insights into the development of the climate and the composition of the atmosphere and to identify long-term changes, make climate models more precise and improve weather forecasts.
