HALO Campaign to Investigate Climate Change in the Southern Hemisphere
Jülich, 11 September 2019 – Jülich stratosphere researchers are currently participating in the SouthTRAC measurement campaign featuring Germany’s research aircraft HALO, which aims to investigate the atmosphere above the southern tip of South America and its impact on climate change.
HALO’s transfer flights between Europe and South America will be used to study issues such as the effects of the ongoing biomass burning in the Amazon rainforest on the global climate. The campaign will be conducted in two phases in September and November 2019, with its base in Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. The primary goal of the first phase is to investigate gravity waves above this part of the continent and the Antarctic. The second phase in November will focus on investigating the exchange of air masses between the troposphere – the lowest layer of the atmosphere – and the stratosphere, which begins at an altitude of about 18 kilometres above the equator.