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
In a new study, Denis Leppla, Thorsten Hoffmann and their colleagues looked at pinic acid and its chiral forms. Pinic acid forms in the atmosphere through SAO formation from α-pinenes. The team wanted to find out how the chemical reactions in the atmosphere affect the chirality of its product pinic acid.
We announce an open position for a scientific programmer at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany to support the ATTO data management team. The deadline for applications is April 15.
We announce two open postdoc positions in environmental & atmospheric sciences in the ATTO project to work on methane emissions and concentrations in the Amazon rainforest. The call will be open until filled.
The future of the Amazon rainforest and its influence on the global climate were the focus of the visit by Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Steffi Lemke to the ATTO - Amazon Tall Tower Observatory in Brazil. The President and the Federal Minister for the Environment visited the German-Brazilian research station, in which the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz participate, on January 2nd.
This October, scientists from the ATTO project met in Manaus, Brazil for our project workshop. It clearly confirmed that ATTO has developed into a research site with globally unique capabilities – despite the pandemic and challenging field conditions. It was the first in-person workshop since the start of the pandemic and many project members had met in person for the first time since early 2020. For this reason alone, the spirits were high.
The team around Cybelli Barbosa analyzed and studied the distribution patterns of giant bioaerosol particles in the Amazon. For this, they looked at over 500 000 individual particles from five years and eight intensive campaigns and made some exciting discoveries, now published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.
Blog: Voices from the Amazon
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.
Hi everyone, my name is Anna Moraes! I started recently as a Ph.D. student at the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA), in Manaus, in the group of Dr. Eliane Gomes Alves. My project focuses on herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs).
Project Updates
In 2018, ATTO junior researchers in Brasil initiated an education project with the local communities near ATTO. These communities of Bela Vista, …