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AGAP: an atmospheric gondola for aerosol profiling

  • Environmental Changes in Arctic
  • Published:
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Abstract

A novel airborne gondola was developed to profile the Arctic boundary layer exploiting a tethered balloon system. A number of aerosol instrumentations were customized and deployed in the gondola for two test campaigns conducted in Ny-Ålesund in September 2014 and April–May 2015. The performances of the instrumental setup have been characterized and will be described in the present paper. An illustration of the main results and a discussion of the main phenomenology will be also presented. Briefly, the tethered balloon systems demonstrates the capability of successfully lifting up to 15 kg of scientific payload, featuring a power autonomy of about 3 h of continuous measurements with one battery. We demonstrate for the first time on a tethered balloon the capability of measuring at the same time aerosol light scattering, absorption coefficients and size distribution, which is very promising for deducing the aerosol optical properties as a function of height along the probed atmospheric column.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the personnel of the Dirigibile Italia Arctic Station, Kings Bay A.S. and the AWI-IPEV for their logistic support in realizing the campaigns. We also thank FAI Instruments (Roma) for supporting the development of the OPC system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (CNR-ISAC), National Research Council, Via Gobetti 101, 40129, Bologna, Italy

    Mauro Mazzola & Maurizio Busetto

  2. POLARIS Research Centre, DISAT University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 1, 20126, Milano, Italy

    Luca Ferrero

  3. Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (CNR-ISAC), National Research Council, Via Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133, Rome, Italy

    Angelo Pietro Viola

  4. Dipartimento di Chimica, Biologia e Biotecnologie, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Via Elce di Sotto 8, 06123, Perugia, Italy

    David Cappelletti

Authors
  1. Mauro Mazzola
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  2. Maurizio Busetto
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  3. Luca Ferrero
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  4. Angelo Pietro Viola
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  5. David Cappelletti
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mauro Mazzola.

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This peer-reviewed article is a result of the multi- and interdisciplinary research activities based at the Arctic Station Dirigibile Italia, coordinated by the Dipartimento Scienze del Sistema Terra e Tecnologie per l’Ambiente of the National Council of Research.

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Mazzola, M., Busetto, M., Ferrero, L. et al. AGAP: an atmospheric gondola for aerosol profiling. Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei 27 (Suppl 1), 105–113 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-016-0514-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-016-0514-x

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