DACCIWA: A better understanding of pollution impacts in West Africa
The DACCIWA project, funded by the European Union, focuses on relations between meteorology, climate and air pollution in West Africa, from Ivory Coast to Nigeria. For the first time scientists are able to fully study the impacts of natural and anthropogenic emissions (emitted by human activities) on the atmosphere of this region and to assess their impact on human and ecosystem health, through a field campaign in June and July 2016.
The ATR 42 operated by the French airborne environment research service named SAFIRE (CNRS / Météo-France / CNES) is one of three research aircraft that have worked in a coordinated way over the countries of the Gulf of Guinea, in addition to many ground equipment. Based in Lomé, Togo, it carried more than two tons of in situ measuring instruments (including 3 different mass spectrometers) and remote sensing. The ATR 42 performed more than 80 hours of scientific flights and thanks to the expertise of the laboratories of LaMP / OPGC, CNRM, LISA, LATMOS and LSCE (all three from IPSL), numerous data sets were gathered.
This airborne campaign documented the chemical composition of the atmosphere upstream and downstream of pollution sources and its impact on cloud properties. It also provided information on regional sources of pollution such as biomass fires or desert dusts. Scientist will now analyze these data in order to propose an instructive scheme of the interaction between atmospheric chemistry, aerosols, low cloud formation and dissipation, energy budget and precipitation in order to improve weather, climate and air quality models.
The movie presented below was directed by par Arnaud Mansat and produced by ULiSSE ; ULiSSE, as a part of the CNRS, coordinated all operations (transportation and customs) regarding the ground data acquisition and Safire logistics material (8.5t, 76m3 for a total value of 350k€).
