FZ-Jülich - ICE-4

Forschungszentrum Jülich participates with the Institute of Climate and Energy Systems - Stratosphere (ICE-4). The institute conducts research on the chemistry, dynamics and microphysics of the stratosphere and the tropopause region, and on the role these atmospheric layers play in the climate system. For this purpose, aircraft and balloons are used for experiments intended to clarify processes, primarily on a local and regional scale. With the analysis and use of satellite data, these studies are expanded to include global and climatological scales. The evaluation of the measured data is closely interlinked with model calculations.

Remote sensing technology is used to observe the temperature and composition of the atmosphere in locations far from the measuring equipment. The instruments can therefore be operated on satellites for observations covering the entire globe. Flown on research aircraft, they provide “curtains” along the flight path. Atmospheric structures that can hardly be understood from individual measurements can often be explained from such two-dimensional (aircraft) data or global (satellite) data. Satellite data are indispensable for global budgets.

Tasks of the ICE-4 remote sensing group include developing and operating its own instruments, retrieving atmospheric temperatures and trace substances from measured infrared radiances – a branch of science in itself –, scientifically interpreting the data and, based on the results, defining new research objectives and proposing new instruments for future satellites. For deployment on the research aircraft HALO, GLORIA was developed, which has the worldwide unique capability to image processes in the tropopause region in 3D by tomography. A satellite version of GLORIA is the basis for the AtmoSat proposal.

Our applications of 3D tomography apply in particular to the investigation of atmospheric waves, which play a crucial role in the dynamic coupling between the middle atmosphere and the troposphere and which influence teleconnection patterns in the climate system. A special competence in this area lies in the derivation of global distributions of gravity wave structures from satellite limb and nadir observations, 3D aircraft data, and model data (e.g. Preusse et al. 2014, Krisch et al. 2017, Ern et al., 2019). These activities play a key role in international gravity wave initiatives of SPARC and ISSI (The International Space Science Institute) and have significantly contributed to important review publications (e.g. Alexander et al., 2010; Geller et al. 2013) and structured programmes of DFG (research unit MS-GWaves) or BMBF (priority programme ROMIC-II, Role of the Middle Atmosphere in Climate).

To study, atmospheric chemistry and transport, ICE-4 uses trace gas data from various limb sounders such as ACE-FTS, MLS, MIPAS-E, and CRISTA (e.g. Grooß and Müller, 2021; Ploeger et al., 2013; Höpfner et al., 2019).    

A new instrumental focus of the remote sensing activities at ICE-4, in collaboration with FZJ-ZEA-2, is the development of miniaturized spatial heterodyne spectrometers (SHS) for atmospheric temperature sounding (Kaufmann et al. 2018). These instruments are deployed on CubeSats. In this context, collaboration with CU Boulder is becoming increasingly important, in part due to the "International Satellite Programme in Research and Education (INSPIRE)", for which the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is the lead agency. As part of INSPIRE-Sat4 (2023) and INSPIRE-Sat3 (2024), ICE-4 will deploy one SHS each for atmospheric temperature (gravity wave) measurements. A joint proposal to NASA under the H-FORT program (March 2021) aims to tomographic gravity wave measurements in the upper atmosphere using tomographic techniques.

Ploeger, F., Günther, G., Konopka, P., Fueglistaler, S., Müller, R., Hoppe, C., Kunz, A., Spang, R., Grooß, J.-U., and Riese, M. (2013), Horizontal water vapor transport in the lower stratosphere from subtropics to high latitudes during boreal summer, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 118, 8111– 8127, doi:10.1002/jgrd.50636.

Preusse, P., Ern, M., Bechtold, P., Eckermann, S. D., Kalisch, S., Trinh, Q. T., and Riese, M.:
Characteristics of gravity waves resolved by ECMWF, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 10483-10508,doi:10.5194/acp-14-10483-2014, 2014.

Krisch, I., Preusse, P., Ungermann, J., Dörnbrack, A., Eckermann, S. D., Ern, M., Friedl-Vallon, F., Kaufmann, M., Oelhaf, H., Rapp, M., Strube, C., and Riese, M.: First tomographic observations of gravity waves by the infrared limb imager GLORIA, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 14937–14953, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-14937-2017, 2017.

Kaufmann, M., Olschewski, F., Mantel, K., Solheim, B., Shepherd, G., Deiml, M., Liu, J., Song, R., Chen, Q., Wroblowski, O., Wei, D., Zhu, Y., Wagner, F., Loosen, F., Froehlich, D., Neubert, T., Rongen, H., Knieling, P., Toumpas, P., Shan, J., Tang, G., Koppmann, R., and Riese, M.: A highly miniaturized satellite payload based on a spatial heterodyne spectrometer for atmospheric temperature measurements in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 11, 3861–3870, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-3861-2018, 2018.

Grooß, J.-U. and Müller, R.: Simulation of the record Arctic stratospheric ozone depletion in 2020, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2429, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2429, 2021.