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
The CloudRoots team would like to invite you to participate in the PhD Skills Course, which will be held from August 5 to 7, 2024, at INPA, Manaus. The aim of the course is to improve students' skills through different steps of their research.
With great sadness, we acknowledge the passing of Dr. Rosa Maria Nascimento dos Santos, meteorologist, Professor at the Universidade do Estado do Amazonas (Amazonas State University, EUA) and a very important member of the ATTO team.
With "Mission ATTO", the research project ATTO sends German students from grade 8 onwards on a fictional research trip to the Brazilian rainforest.
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
Hi there, my name is Renato Braghiere! I’m a climatologist and global ecologist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and I have worked on the ATTO project during my MSc degree from 2011 to 2013. I grew up in the countryside of the state of São Paulo in Brazil amid the trees, and from my early years, I’ve been curious about how nature works and how we connect with nature in so many different ways.
My name is Maryam and I am currently working as a research data manager at MPI-BGC. I have a background in geophysics and lots of prior experience with data management so that I can now take care of the ATTO data portal.
Hello everyone, my name is Frederik Lange. I started recently as a Ph.D. student at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. Here, I work in the Molecular Biogeochemistry group with Gerd Gleixner as my supervisor.
Hello everyone, my name is Jeová Ramos da Silva Junior. I am a meteorologist and had my first contact with ATTO at the beginning of my master’s degree in 2017. During this period, I investigated how biomass burning might affect photosynthesis inside the canopy of the Amazon Rainforest.
My name is Maria Prass and I’m a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz in the group of Christopher Pöhlker who’s focused on aerosol analytics. Born in the countryside, the forest and all its small to large inhabitants are fascinating me up even today. Studying biology seemed to be the perfect match for me. Who would have thought, that this would move me to be a scientist in the most beautiful but at the same time endangered ecosystem in the world: the Amazon rainforest?
In Chapter 2 of our "ATTO through time" blog, it is time to hear from Antonio Manzi, the first coordinator of the ATTO project on the Brazilian side. He recounts the vision of Amazonian scientists to build a tall tower in the 1980s, and how it finally became a reality nearly 30 years later.