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Oberpfaffenhofen/Leipzig. The German research aircraft HALO is currently being prepared for deployment in New Zealand at its home base at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen: During the "HALO-South" mission, which will begin in September, researchers led by the Leibniz Institute of Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) will investigate the interaction of clouds, aerosols, and radiation over the Southern Ocean. To this end, HALO will spend five weeks conducting measurement flights over the oceans of the clean southern hemisphere from Christchurch, New Zealand. Since it went into service in 2012, HALO has only been used this far south once before.
The mission in New Zealand is therefore a first: never before has a German research aircraft investigated the South Pacific and the adjacent Southern Ocean in this region. The aircraft measurements during ‘HALO-South’ are mainly funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) with contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). They mark the start of intensive research cooperation between Germany and New Zealand.
The researchers hope that the measurements will not only provide important data for optimizing weather forecasts and climate models in the little-explored southern hemisphere, but also provide a better fundamental understanding of how the atmosphere and clouds will respond to a decline in anthropogenic emissions in the coming decades. For the team, looking into the cleaner atmosphere around Antarctica is therefore also a glimpse into the future.
The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is one of the cloudiest regions on Earth. Current climate models are based primarily on measurements in the northern hemisphere. Since the southern hemisphere has less land mass, fewer people, and less industry, it is significantly cleaner than the northern hemisphere. Because the atmosphere in the south is cleaner, there are fewer particles on which droplets or ice crystals can form. That is why there is less ice and more liquid water droplets in the clouds there than in the north. However, atmospheric models have so far been mainly aligned to data from the northern hemisphere, which leads to uncertainties in the representation of clouds in the southern hemisphere. This discrepancy has been known for several years, but there is a lack of measurements in the south to adjust the climate models accordingly.
"We hope that the large-scale HALO-South measurement campaign will enable us to make an important contribution to closing this gap," explains campaign leader Prof. Mira Pöhlker from TROPOS and the University of Leipzig. Twenty-two special measuring instruments from eight institutes will be used to study the entire cycle of cloud formation, from particle formation from precursor gases to cloud seeds and the radiation properties of clouds. "We are very pleased to have so many experienced experts on board to work together to answer questions such as: What aerosols are present in the Southern Ocean? Where do they come from? How do they change clouds?" A total of 176 flight hours are planned for the HALO-South mission. Around 50 researchers will be on site from the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS), the Leipzig Institute for Meteorology at the Leipzig University, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), Goethe University Frankfurt (GUF), the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) in Mainz, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ). The aircraft is operated by the Flight Experiments (FX) facility at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen. The University of Canterbury, Christchurch, and MetService New Zealand are also participating with ground-based measurements.
September marks the end of winter in New Zealand and the beginning of spring in the Southern Ocean. This time of year was chosen to study the particularly clean atmosphere over the seas around New Zealand. The campaign will be embedded in parallel intensive field activities such as ground-based measurements from New Zealand and will be supported by satellite investigations. For example, the flight plan on site will be adjusted to the overflights of the ESA EarthCARE Earth observation satellite in order to fly exactly under the satellite orbit. The HALO-South mission will thus support the validation of the ESA satellite as well as the EU CleanCloud project, which investigates interactions between aerosols and clouds to improve our understanding of climate dynamics in a constantly changing world. Prof. Andreas Macke, Director of TROPOS, who initiated HALO-South in 2018, adds: "I am delighted that, with this and other projects in collaboration with international partners, will enable us to take research in the southern hemisphere to an unprecedented level."
The aircraft measurements taken by HALO will also be supplemented by ground measurements at the MetService New Zealand site in Invercargill in the far south of New Zealand. From September 2025 to March 2027, several remote sensing and in-situ measuring devices from TROPOS will analyze cloud properties during the "goSouth-2" measurement campaign to create a detailed contrast study between clean Antarctic air and aerosol-polluted Australian air. During HALO-South, in addition to the measurements in Invercargill, which are scheduled to last around two years, accompanying ground measurements will also be carried out by the Universities of Leipzig and Canterbury at the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre on the eastern side of New Zealand's South Island. There, a cloud radar and a Doppler wind lidar will contribute to recording the cloud structure that is important for the HALO-South campaign. The HALO-South mission thus marks the start of a series of intensive collaborations in the field of atmospheric research between Germany and New Zealand. The investigations around Antarctica are to be continued in 2027-2030 as part of the large-scale international research project "Antarctica InSync" with a series of Antarctic expeditions, which are currently being planned and will also play a role in atmospheric research.
HALO-South will provide urgently needed insights into the relationship between aerosols and clouds in the southern hemisphere, from the formation of cloud droplets and ice to changes in the radiation budget caused by clouds, which in turn are relevant for the formation of aerosols. These findings will be extrapolated to a larger scale using satellite data and global climate models. The campaign will build on and continue previous HALO campaigns that focused either on cloud and aerosol properties or on gas and aerosol properties (ML-CIRRUS, CIRRUS-HL, ACRIDICON, CAFE-EU, CAFE-Brasil, CAFE-Pacific, EMeRGe-EU, and EMeRGe-Asia). The measurements at HALO-South are intended to cover the interaction with aerosols throughout the entire life cycle of clouds, from formation to dissipation. With this extensive measurement campaign, the researchers aim to better understand the differences between the southern and northern hemispheres in order to improve weather forecasting and climate models. They also hope to gain a better understanding of how the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere will change in an increasingly decarbonized world without fossil-fuel based emissions.
HALO
The HALO research aircraft is a joint initiative of German environmental and climate research institutions. HALO was funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), the Helmholtz Association, the Max Planck Society (MPG), the Free State of Bavaria, the Jülich Research Center (FZJ), the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
HALO is operated by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Max Planck Society (MPG), the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research in Leipzig (TROPOS). The DLR is both the owner and operator of the aircraft.
Note for the media:
HALO will be prepared for deployment in New Zealand at the DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen until August 29. If you are interested in taking photos or video footage on site, please contact Bernadette Jung, DLR Press Office, Tel: +49 8153 28-2251,bernadette.jung@dlr.de .
HALO will be transferred to New Zealand in the first week of September. The first measurement flights of "HALO-South" are planned for the second week of September, with the last ones scheduled for the second week of October. HALO is expected to return to Oberpfaffenhofen on October 17 at 9:00 a.m. CET.
Prof. Mira Pöhlker
(Mission PI)
Head of the Atmospheric Microphysics Department, Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) and Leipzig University
Phone +49-341-2717-7431
https://www.tropos.de/institut/abteilungen/experimentelle-aerosol-und-wolkenmikr...
and
Dr. Stephan Mertes
(Mission Coordinator)
Research Associate, Department of Atmospheric Microphysics, Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS), Leipzig
Phone +49-341-2717-7143
https://www.tropos.de/institut/ueber-uns/mitarbeitende/stephan-mertes
or
Tilo Arnhold
Public Relations, TROPOS
Phone +49-341-2717-7189
http://www.tropos.de/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/
https://Mission "HALO-South"
https://halo-research.de/sience/future-missions/halo-south/
https://Measurement campaign "goSouth-2"
https://www.tropos.de/aktuelles/science-blog/beitrag/gosouth-2
https://EU project "Clouds and climate transitioning to post-fossil aerosol regime" (CleanCloud)
https://projects.au.dk/cleancloud
https://ESA-EarthCARE
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/EarthCARE
https://earth.esa.int/eogateway/missions/earthcare
The German research aircraft HALO is currently being prepared for deployment in New Zealand at its h ...
Source: Tilo Arnhold
Copyright: TROPOS
The German research aircraft HALO is currently being prepared for deployment in New Zealand at its h ...
Source: Roger Riedel
Copyright: DLR
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