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
Episode 5 of the new five-part series from the BBC
Although located in the tropics, the Amazon sporadically experiences incursions of cold waves called friagem events. They significantly impact the weather patterns during the time they occur, causing for example a temperature drop and increased cloudiness. Guilherme Camarinha-Neto and his colleagues now found that they also affect atmospheric chemistry.
The majority of global precipitation is formed through the pathway of ice nucleation, but we’re facing large knowledge gaps that include the distribution, seasonal variations and sources of ice-nucleating particles. To fill some of those knowledge gaps, Jann Schrod and his co-authors produced a record of long-term measurements of INPs. They collected data for nearly two years at four different locations. One of those sites was ATTO.
Felipe Souza, Price Mathai and their co-authors published a new study analyzing the diverse bacterial population in the Amazonian atmosphere. The composition varied mainly with seasonal changes in temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation. On the other hand, they did not detect significant differences between the ground and canopy levels. They also identified bacterial species that participate in the nitrogen cycle.
Ramsay et al. measured inorganic trace gases such as ammonia and nitric acid and aerosols in the dry season at ATTO. They are to serve as baseline values for their concentration and fluxes in the atmosphere and are a first step in deciphering exchange processes of inorganic trace gases between the Amazon rainforest and the atmosphere.
Soot and other aerosols from biomass burning can influence regional and global weather and climate. Lixia Liu and her colleagues studied how this affects the Amazon Basin during the dry season. While there are many different interactions between biomass burning aerosols and climate, they found that they overall lead to fewer and weaker rain events in the Amazon rainforest.
Blog: Voices from the Amazon
My name is Sebastian Donner and I am a PhD student working in the satellite remote sensing group at the Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie in Mainz. I studied Meteorology in Mainz and then stayed here to obtain my Bachelor's and Master's degrees. Already back then, I was really fascinated by the atmosphere’s composition.
Hey, this is Sam Jones! Earlier in 2019 I finally moved to Manaus and took a job at INPA. I say finally because I had flirted with the idea for quite some time. Now I often get asked the enduringly difficult question “What are you doing here?”. The short answer is that I’m working as a soil ‘biogeochemist’ on the ATTO project.
My name is Flavia Durgante and I am a Postdoc in the Wetland Ecology Group of Dr. Florian Wittmann at the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Germany. At ATTO, our project focuses on water. We're analyzing water isotopes from different sources such as rain, soil deeps, rivers and xylem water from trees in different habitats. Additionally, we want to recognize climatic signals as oxygen isotopes in the tree rings.
Hey everyone, my name is Rodrigo Alves. I started my Post Master position in the ATTO project in May of 2019. I’m a biologist and graduated from the Federal University of Pampa (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil). During my studies, I worked with the effect of climate change on plant communities in Antarctica and participated in three Antarctic expeditions. Now, I have the chance to learn more about those effects in the Amazon rainforest.
Hello everyone, my name is Leslie Kremper and I started my Ph.D. in November of 2018. I’m a biologist and I will analyze the morphology, composition and hygroscopicity of single aerosol particles from the Amazon with different techniques.
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