KADI – Knowledge and climate services from an African observation and Data research Infrastructure
Description: The project “Knowledge and climate services from an African observation and Data research Infrastructure” aims to provide concepts for developing the best available science and science-based services in Africa that are needed to sharpen our common action on climate change as outlined in the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG 13 ‘Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts’. The concepts we want to provide aim at improving the knowledge base on climate
change in Africa and developing the tools to combat the negative consequences of it. This basic objective shall be achieved by a consortium that combines partners from Africa and Europe but also combines diverse experiences, backgrounds and viewpoints. The common goal is to provide a comprehensive concept that supports the important societal role of research outlined above by co-designing research capacities for climate change observation with societal demands and expectations, in our case called ‘climate services’ and to pave the way for their implementation. The specific objectives of the proposed project are:
- A comprehensive design for a pan-African climate observation system developed on the basis of climate services as a guiding design principle. This shall be rooted in a comprehensive documentation of past and existing observing capability, contrasted with scientifically justified requirements to identify the gaps.
- A broad information network as the basis for successful and sustainable cooperation that connects infrastructure operators, scientists,data and knowledge users, a community of practice in climate services, agencies and funding bodies. This will be achieved by a dense networking and knowledge exchange approach connecting to all important players on the global, continental, national, and local levels.
- A solid strategy for implementation and usage in close connection to future actors and users.
Financial entity: HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01, Horizon Europe.
Funding budget: 60.000,00 € (Total budget of 1.771.875,00€)
Contract number: 101058525
Duration: 2022 – 2025 (3 years)
Number of involved institutions: AEMET (The Izaña Atmospheric Research Center), Integrated Carbon Observation System European Research Infrastructureconsortium (ICOS), University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, National Research Foundation (South Africa), University of Pretoria (South Africa), Helsingin Yliopisto (Finland), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Universite Felix Houphouet Boigny (Cote d’Ivoire), Kenya Meteorological Department, Turun Yliopisto (Finland), The provost, fellows, foundation scholars & the other members of board, of the College of the Holy & Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin (Ireland), Norce Norwegian Research Centre, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (Greece) and Eidgenoessisches Departement des Innern (Switzerland).
Principal investigator: Dr. Werner Kutsch, ICOS-ERIC (Dr. África Barreto and Dr. Omaira García from AEMET)
ATMO-ACCESS – Sustainable Access to Atmospheric Research Facilities
Description: The ambition of ATMO-ACCESS is to address the needs for developing sustainable solutions based on the principles of open access and to develop guidelines and recommendations for governance, management and funding for efficient and effective access provision suited to distribute atmospheric RIs. This project investigates the most suitable mechanisms that could lead to the sustainable provision of access to atmospheric research infrastructures.
The main objectives of ATMO-ACCESS are:
- to provide coordinated open physical, remote and virtual access to state-of-the-art facilities and services in atmospheric RIs and further enhance their range of products, capabilities and accessibility for a wide range of users, including the private sector
- to engage facilities and their national stakeholders and direct them towards improved harmonisation of access procedures across the different member states, while also exploring modalities by which the use of atmospheric RIs can be further enhanced
- to explore and test new modalities of access that build on the complementarity and synergies among atmospheric RIs and respond to the evolving needs of users in relation to training, research and technology development, innovation and data services
- to identify the most suitable conditions for establishing sustainable access procedures across the EU for distributed atmospheric RIs, involving national and international stakeholders.
AEMET-IARC contribute to WP8: “Sustainable and strategic framework for access to distributed atmospheric Research Infrastructures”, offering access throughout the project to our facilities at IZO (for more information, please visit the project webpage).
Financial entity: European Commission (EU H2020-INFRAIA-2018-2020 Integrating and opening research infrastructures of European interest)
Funding budget: (Total Consortium = 14.999.949,75€; AEMET as Beneficiary = 239.600,00€ (including 45.000,00€ of University of Valladolid as Third-Party))
Contract number: grant agreement No 101008004
Duration: 2021-2025
Number of involved institutions: 38 Institutions
Principal investigator: Dr. Paolo Laj (Coordinator, CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS (CNRS)), Dr. Natalia Prats and Dr. África Barreto (AEMET), Carlos Toledano (Valladolid University)
Project webpage: https://www.atmo-access.eu/
ACTRIS-IMP – Aerosols, Clouds, and Trace Gases Research Infraestructure, Implementation Phase
Description: ACTRIS Implementation project (ACTRIS IMP) builds on the achievements of the successful ACTRIS PPP and on the scientific and technical deliveries of the ACTRIS-2 and EUROCHAMP-2020 projects. The ACTRIS IMP project objectives are based on the overall ACTRIS implementation phase objectives. Moreover, the ACTRIS IMP project will elevate ACTRIS to a new level of maturity and will set the required coordinated structures for coherent implementation actions, to be performed at both the national and European level.The overarching objective of ACTRIS IMP is to coordinate and accomplish the actions required for implementing a globally-recognised long-term sustainable research infrastructure with operational services by 2025.ACTRIS IMP will build on three strategic pillars: 1) securing the long-term sustainability of ACTRIS; 2) ensuring the coordinated implementation of ACTRIS functionalities; and 3) positioning ACTRIS in the regional, European and international science and innovation landscape. ACTRIS IMP will enable ACTRIS to respond to user-community needs and requirements for fully operational services supporting Earth system science, for atmospheric and climate research in particular. Moreover, ACTRIS IMP will enhance ACTRIS relevance, innovation potential, and societal impacts. ACTRIS IMP will form the coordinated European framework having the necessary with the needed tools towards for achieving these objectives duringin the four-year duration of the project, also implementing effective risk management and contingency plans to fully embrace all requirements for its the successful implementation of ACTRIS.
Financial entity: European Commission (EU Horizon 2020 Coordination and Support Action)
Funding budget: (Total Consortium = 4.999.997,50 €. AEMET as Third-Party of University of Valladolid)
Contract number: grant agreement No 871115
Duration: 2021-2024
Number of involved institutions: 35 Institutions (AEMET as Third-Party of UVa) https://www.actris.eu/Projects/ACTRISIMP(2020-2023)/Partners.aspx
Principal investigator: Dr. Sanna Sorvari (Coordinator, FMI, Finnish Meteorological Institute), Dr. África Barreto (AEMET), Dr. Carlos Toledano (Valladolid University)
EMPIR-MAPP – Metrology for Aerosol Optical Properties
Description: The overall aim of this project is to enable the SI-traceable measurement of column-integrated aerosol optical properties retrieved from the passive remote sensing of the atmosphere using solar and lunar radiation measurements. We will calibrate radiometers of the three largest aerosol monitoring networks at NMI laboratories and develop portable devices for the in-field calibration of network radiometers in order to validate and improve the current aerosol optical property retrievals using state-of-the-art inversion models. The goal is to standardise aerosol optical properties retrieval by shortening the calibration chain, reduce calibration downtime of network radiometers and establish their consistent dissemination including their uncertainty.
Financial entity: EURAMET-EMPIR European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research
Funding budget: 101.205,00 € (Total Consortium = 2.197.116,25 €)
Contract number: 19ENV04 MAPP
Duration: 2020 – 2023 (3 years)
Number of involved institutions: SFI Davos, Aalto, CMI, NPL, PTB, VSL, AEMET, CNR, CNRS, GRASP SAS, UoR, UV, UVa
Principal investigator: Dr. Julian Grobner (Coordinator, SFI Davos), Dr. Emilio Cuevas and Dr. África Barreto (AEMET), Dr. Carlos Toledano (Valladolid University)
Improving the lunar irradiance model of ESA (LIME-2)
Description: Lunar observations are suitable for monitoring the radiometric stability of spaceborne optical instruments: the radiometric stability of the Moon full disk when repeatedly observed under strictly identical observational conditions was estimated to be better than 10-9 %/year. The irradiance of the Moon, integrated over the full disk, as observed from the Earth or in orbit around the Earth, however does not follow a simple cycle of 28 days. Lunar irradiance/reflectance models are used predict observations of spaceborne sensors and serve as radiometric reference. The first model used by the remote sensing community was the USGS ROLO model (http://www.Moon-cal.org). The ROLO was built from lunar observations made from terrestrial telescope. In the frame of a previous ESA study the Lunar Irradiance Model of ESA (LIME) was developed based on ground measurements collected over a period spanning more than 2 years from the Pico Teide and Izaña Observatory (Spain) by the National Physical Laboratory of UK (NPL), the University of Valladolid (Spain) and the Vlaamse Instelling voor Technologisch Onderzoek (VITO, Belgium).. In order to provide hyperspectral-like simulations of the lunar disk, the spectrally discrete LIME model outputs need to be spectrally interpolated. Such interpolation is achieved using reflectance from Lunar soil samples. The objectives of this LIME-2 project are to improve the methodology allowing to spectrally interpolate the current LIME model output by making use of hyperspectral measurements of the Moon and to demonstrate an estimated radiometric uncertainty below 2% (k=2) for lunar disk irradiance simulations at any wavelength in the spectral range 400 nm to 2500 nm.
Funded by: European Space Agency (ESA)
Participating Institutions: NPL, VITO, UVa
Funding budget: 87000€
Duration: 2022-2023
Principal Investigator: Dr. Carlos Toledano (Valladolid University)