CARE-C to participate in Aeolus Tropical Campaign 2021

Teams of the Climate and Atmosphere Research Center of the Cyprus Institute, will take part in the Aeolus Tropical Campaign in summer 2021 in Cape Verde, coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

The Aeolus mission was launched in August 2018. The Earth Explorer Atmospheric Dynamics Mission Aeolus aims to provide global observations of wind profiles from space to improve the quality of weather forecasts, and to advance our understanding of atmospheric dynamics and climate processes.

In the context of the Aeolus Tropical Campaign, Aeolus underflights will be performed by a German, American, French, Slovenian and Cypriot aircraft. These will be complemented by ground-based instruments from international teams, including novel lidar instrument tailored for Aeolus validation. The main campaign will be in July 2021, with some teams starting in June 2021 and finishing in August 2021.

Cape Verde is an island country located in the Tropics in the Central Atlantic around 570 km off the coast of West Africa. Strong winds frequently transport desert dust and smoke from wildfires on the continent to the islands, which make the location a hot spot for investigations of cloudaerosol interaction and atmospheric dynamics. Supporting Aeolus product validation and calibration is particularly important in the tropics, where Aeolus observations are expected to have a very high impact for numerical weather prediction. In synergy with an impressive collection of airborne and ground-based instrumentation,

Aeolus will help to understand these processes.

The Aeolus Tropical Campaign is organized by ESA in collaboration with European and US Partners. In addition to the Cyprus Institute (CYI), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Météo-France, Atmospheres Laboratory, Backgrounds, Space Observations (LATMOS National Observatory of Athens (NOA), Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS), University of Nova Gorica (UNG), the Ocean Science Centre Mindelo (OSCM), and many more.

For more information, you can refer to the Aeolus Tropical campaign brochure.