The Cyprus Atmospheric Observatory (CAO) aims to provide high quality, long-term observations on a wide range of key atmospheric pollutants relevant to air quality and climate change (reactive and greenhouse gases, aerosols) using state-of-the-art in-situ and remote sensing techniques.

Located at a regional background site in Cyprus, the station is co-operated in collaboration with the Department of Labour Inspection (DLI), which is in charge of the air quality network in Cyprus.

The station is ideally located for documenting and contrasting long-range transported pollution from three continents (Europe, Africa, and the Middle East), and dust aerosols from the two largest desert regions in the world (Sahara, Arabian Peninsula).

It offers on-site facilities and supportive infrastructure for research, development, and testing of new technologies related to atmospheric measurements in close collaboration with industrial partners. It is equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation jointly operated with research teams from CEA and CNRS (France), Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Germany), and University of Helsinki (Finland).

CAO is part of major international atmospheric networks, such as the European Research Infrastructure for the observation of Aerosol, Clouds and Trace Gases (ACTRIS). CAO is also a regional station in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) program. It is the first GAW regional station in Cyprus, and the first ever, to provide the most comprehensive set of quality controlled long-term atmospheric observations in the EMME region.

The Unmanned Systems Research Laboratory (USRL) at The Cyprus Institute offers on-site related infrastructure for research, development, and testing of technologies related to UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles).

These are remotely controlled aircraft that can be flown autonomously based on pre-programmed flight paths, or can even fly by using more complex dynamic automation systems.

UAVs can carry an increasing amount of sensors and fill the gap between ground-based and satellite measurements, by providing, for a very competitive cost and risk, the capacity to perform with high spatial resolution, long-term monitoring observations necessary for assessing air pollution and climate change in our region. The current mission of the USRL is to provide high-quality observations of atmospheric pollutants and other parameters relevant to air quality and climate change. Taking advantage of several other CyI infrastructures, such as the instrumentation and analytical laboratories for testing and qualifying miniaturized sensors, as well as a private runway and dedicated airspace, USRL performs regular (weekly) UAV flights to document and contrast long-range transported pollution from three continents (Europe, Africa, and West Asia) and dust aerosols from the largest desert regions in the world (Sahara, Middle East).

By integrating expertise in electronics engineering, material science, fluid dynamics and information technology, recent advances at the instrumentation lab have led to new possibilities in the development of miniaturized, lightweight and cost-effective instruments for measuring aerosol particles and gaseous pollutants.

Novel manufacturing methods (e.g., using mold casting and 3D printing) are already employed by members of the Instrumentation laboratory for building integrated instruments for measuring the concentration and size of atmospheric aerosol particles and gas sensors. Such instruments are expected to lead the way into widespread use in ground and airborne monitoring using platforms such as balloons, UAVs, and combinations of the two. A weather simulation chamber has been built to test miniaturized sensors in real-world conditions (UAV flights in the upper troposphere).

EMME-CARE is upgrading these facilities to enable the development, characterisation, and testing of the most recent miniaturised air quality monitoring instruments, including systems that go beyond the current state of the art. The Instrumentation Laboratory’s activities will be expanded to include the development of miniaturised gas sensors, as well as integrated air quality instrumentation for ground-based in-situ measurements, and for remote sensing instruments.

An emerging regional hub for environmental chemical analyses.

EMME-CARE will implement additional, advanced analytical techniques and develop training and services to become a regional hub for environmental chemical analyses. It will be supported by an ISOaccreditation level, which has now become a prerequisite for (EU regulated) air quality analyses. This facility will support the long-term atmospheric monitoring programme including field studies as well as the construction and long-term operation of a regional atmospheric network with high quality off-line gas and aerosol measurements.

ECL will be enhanced with multi-purpose liquid chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry facilities to detect a wider range of organic aerosol species and tracers at high resolution, as well as the capacity for off-line GHG (flasks) measurements and bioaerosol (pollen, bacteria, spores) speciation techniques.

Currently and until the construction of the new CARE-C Headquarters in the CyI Athalassa Campus, the ECL will be sharing laboratory space with the CyI Facility for Chemical Analyses (FCA).

CARE-C research facilities will generate a mass of environmental data from observations and modelling that will need automated processing according to quality control protocols (some of them performed in near real time), curation, and storage for further exploitation by different R&D departments and third parties. Based on the successful “SmartSMEAR” system (involving near real-time data and on-line visualisations), and the SMEAR data web portal, DAC will be established providing well-documented open access to observational data and related process chains and flows.

The Environmental Chamber is a new Laboratory which will have the capacity to perform experiments under simulated environmental conditions to facilitate greater understanding of field observations. It will further the understanding of various atmospheric processes such as the influence of air temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity, reactive gases and of radicals reactions on aerosols and the modification of their properties (physical, chemical, thermodynamic, optical).

It will also have an educational goal: providing students and researches from Cyprus and elsewhere in the region with the training necessary for them to operate in more advanced chambers such as EUROCHAMP 2000 or the CLOUD chamber at CERN.

Complementary to CAO (which will provide 24/7 continuous measurements), the Mobile Laboratory Unit will allow CARE-C to perform intensive field studies of several weeks or months per year in Cyprus, the EMME region and beyond.

Incorporated into a 20-feet standard sea container, MoLa will be easily transportable with minimal logistical constraints, providing a key advantage for field experiments. It will include state-of-the-art instrumentation for measuring levels of GHG, reactive gases, and aerosols) and will be able to deliver critical information on emission sources and atmospheric processes (fluxes, emission factors, chemical fingerprints) to a variety of urban and remote locations.

Cy-Tera: Cy-Tera High Performance Computing Facility for Cyprus

The Cy-Tera project aims to create a research facility including a High-Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure supporting cutting-edge scientific applications, including computational science research, associated HPC user support and training programs. It constitutes a major step in the development of the Computation-based Science and Technology Research Center (CaSToRC) of the Cyprus Institute (CyI).

The Cy-Tera facility is the first HPC facility at multi-Teraflop/s level in Cyprus, serving the needs of CyI and its partners (The National Center for Supercomputing Applications, located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, the University of Cyprus, and the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) for frontier research applications with scientific and social importance.