Climate-observation on a high level - Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO)
The atmospheric measurement tower ATTO is 325 m high and the core component of a field observatory in the Brazilian Amazon region.
The steel tower ATTO is equipped with numerous measuring devices amidst the Amazon rainforest. ATTO enables scientists to measure and monitor climate-relevant trace gases and to analyze exchange processes between the bio- and atmosphere. The data serve for example to quantify the forest-borne and forest-bound CO2 or to measure and analyze aerosols that influence cloud-formation and consequently the water-cycle.
ATTOs footprint comprises several hundred square kilometer - a huge part of the Amazon basin. It is the world's largest as well as relatively undisturbed forest and one of the most important regions influencing the global climate-system, but endangered by present and future changes of climate and land-use.
The BMBF has financed ATTO which was officially inaugurated in 2015, together with the Brazilian Research Ministry (MCTI) aiming to contribute substantially to a better understanding of chemical and physical processes in the earth-atmosphere boundary layer that impact climate change.
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