Welcome
Welcome to our website for ATTO, the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory – an Amazon research project.
This research site is located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil, about 150 km north of Manaus. It is run together by scientists from Germany and Brazil. Its aim is to continuously record meteorological, chemical and biological data, such as the concentration of greenhouses gases. With the help of these data, we hope to gain insights into how the Amazon interacts with the overlying atmosphere and the soil below. Because this region is of such importance to the global climate, it is vital to get a better understanding of these complex processes. Only then will we be able to make more accurate climate predictions.
Have a look around on our website to learn more about the research performed at ATTO and in labs and offices around the world. Please note that the website is still under constructions and more content will be added. So be sure to check back soon! You can also follow us on Social Media to get an insight into the daily lives of the ATTO scientists and stay up-to-date on all the latest news and events!
News
This year's ATTO workshop will take place in at INPA in Manaus October 2 - 4, 2024.
With "Mission ATTO", the research project ATTO sends German students from grade 8 onwards on a fictional research trip to the Brazilian rainforest.
We are offering a biological technician position dealing with epiphytic plants and their role in CO2 and water cycling in the Amazonian rainforest. The position is for 6 months renewable for up to 2 years (starting in March 2024).
Direct measurements of OH radicals are rare and difficult to achieve. However, since they react with BVOCs, Ringsdorf et al. inferred them from isoprene measurements at ATTO. To do so, they applied a technique called ‘Dynamical Time Warping’ from the field of speech recognition. Akima Ringsdorf et al. published the study “Inferring the diurnal variability of OH radical concentrations over the Amazon from BVOC measurements” Open Access in Nature Scientific Reports.
Checker Tobi embarks on a second adventure for the big screen in Germany. "Checker Tobi und die Reise zu den fliegenden Flüssen" takes him to ATTO! The movie is in theaters now in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and will be part of the 2024 Schulkinowochen.
Eliane Gomes Alves and her colleagues measured isoprene emissions at the ATTO 80-meter tower across three years to better understand how these emissions vary seasonally and under extreme climatic conditions like El Niño events. They also looked into which biological and environmental factors regulate the emission of isoprene to the atmosphere.
Blog: Voices from the Amazon
Hello, everyone! My name is Carla Webber and I’m the new post-doc in the Cryptogamic communities group at the ATTO. I’m a biocrust researcher and have worked on this subject for more than ten years. Biocrusts taught me to be an interdisciplinary researcher.
My name is Tarek S. El-Madany and I’m the new head of the Central Service Group “Field Experiments and Instrumentation” at MPI-BGC in Jena. I am taking over from Olaf Kolle, who will be retiring this year. I’m a trained landscape ecologist and specialized in micrometeorology.
I want one! This was the enthusiastic reaction of a Brazilian student after her first encounter with a scintillometer at the CloudRoots campaign in Amazonia. The scintillometer is indeed a special instrument that deserves admiration.
I am Subha and I like to call myself an interdisciplinary researcher. I did civil engineering for my bachelor’s degree, and for my master’s degree, I worked on the applications of remote sensing and GIS. Now I work full-time at Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz with a wonderful team led by Christopher Pöhlker.
My name is Stefanie Hildmann and I am currently a PhD student in the group ‘Organic Trace Analysis’ of Prof. Thorsten Hoffmann at the Johannes Gutenberg – University of Mainz (Germany). In my PhD, I want to characterize secondary organic aerosols (SOA) chemically at the molecular level.
Hi, my name is Viviana Horna. This April 2022 I started working at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry as the new scientific coordinator of the ATTO project. I studied tropical forestry in Peru for my BSc, where I am from.
Project Updates
In 2018, ATTO junior researchers in Brasil initiated an education project with the local communities near ATTO. These communities of Bela Vista, Maracarana and Macacaboia are located along the Uatuma river, partially within the USD reserve. They are small communities