ACONVEX - Aerosols, Clouds, cONVection EXperiment (2011-2017)
COORDINATOR:
- Henrique Barbosa
AGENCY:
- Multiple projects supported the experiment
Rationale
The concentration of water vapor in the tropics is highly variable in both time and space. Its vertical distribution above the boundary layer depends on slow advection and on the deep convection it self, which serves as the free troposphere’s water vapor source. At the same time, deep convection itself is sensitive to the distribution of humidity in the free troposphere, developing more vigorously in humid environments. Water vapor also plays an important role in enhancing the convective available potential energy (CAPE), which depends essentially on the boundary layer humidity, but also on the concentration of water in the free troposphere. While CAPE is constantly removed from the atmosphere by convection itself. Observations with high spatial and temporal resolution are necessary for a better understanding these complex interactions and feedback mechanisms between convection and humidity which occur in meso or smaller scales. Over the tropical regions, however, there are very few of such measurements particularly long-term ones allowing for a climatological perspective.
To overcome this lack of observations, a new experimental site was implemented near Manaus-AM, in the Brazilian Amazon Forest. The ACONVEX (Aerosols, Clouds, cONVection EXperiment) site will run continuously during the next years applying a synergy of different instruments.
Supporting Projects
In our Laboratory, the following research projects supportted the ACONVEX experiment:
- The climatic effects of clouds in the radiative balance and hydrological cycle of the Amazon
- Coordinator: Theotonio Pauliquevis
- Agency: CNPq LBA, 458017/2013-2, 2014-2016
- Cloud optical properties in the Amazon derived from ground and satellite based instruments
- Coordinator: Henrique Barbosa
- Agency: Capes, Ciência sem fronteiras, BJT A016_2013
- GoAmazon: Interactions of the urban plume of Manaus with biogenic forest emissions in Amazonia.
- Coordinator: Paulo Artaxo
- Agency: FAPESP 2013/05015-0
- Brazil-USA Collaborative Research: Modifications by Anthropogenic Pollution of the Natural Atmospheric Chemistry and Particle Microphysics of the Tropical Rain Forest During the GoAmazon Intensive Operating Periods (IOPs)
- Coordinator: Henrique Barbosa
- Agency: FAPESP/DOE/FAPEAM 2013/50510-5