Variables & Measurement Techniques

The key-mission of CIS is to offer operational support to ACTRIS National Facilities (NFs) operating instrumentation for continuous long-term measurements of cloud occurrence, cloud water content, and cloud droplet effective diameter at observational platforms, or for episodic measurements of cloud particle size distributions, chemical cloud water composition, and ice nucleating particles during dedicated laboratory and field campaigns.

Observational Platforms

Observational platforms have to provide the two mandatory variables

  • liquid water content
  • droplet effective diameter

and must provide at least two of the specializing variables

  • droplet number concentration
  • droplet size distribution
  • ice particle number concentration
  • ice particle size distribution
  • INP number concentration
  • INP temperature spectrum
  • bulk cloud water chemical composition

Sonnblick Observatory

© Ludwig Rasser

 

Measurement Techniques

 

mandatory variables
PVM-100  

© GeoSphere Austria, SBO /Elke Ludewig

PVM_gerberscientific

Particulate Volume Monitor PVM-100 from Gerber Scientic Inc.

 

  • liquid water content
  • droplet effective diameter

 

 

 

INP measurements
HINC-Auto PINE

© ETH Zurich/Cyrill Brunner

hinc_auto_eth

Continuous Flow Diffusion Chamber HINC (Horizontal Ice Nucleation Chamber)-Auto developed by ETH Zurich

See also technical paper

© Bilfinger Noell GmbH

pine

mobile cloud chamber PINE developed by KIT

See also technical paper and availability at Bilfinger Noell GmbH.
INSEKT  

© KIT/IMK-AAF

INSEKT_filterINSEKT_lab

Freezing Assay INSEKT (Ice Nucleation Spectrometer of the Karlsruhe Insitute of Technology)

See also technical paper

  

 

cloud water chemistry

The cloud water chemistry analysis contains both the cloud water sampling with specialized collectors and the subsequent offline chemical analysis by i.e. ion chromatography systems.

cloud particle measurements

Supported instruments for cloud particle measurements are based on Mie-Scattering Probes as CDP and Imaging Probes as CPI.

Exploratory Platforms

tbs

Achievements

PINE at SBO

© KIT/Pia Bogert

09 November 2021, by CCIce

start of first long-term test campaigns with the mobile cloud chamber PINE at the Sonnblick Observatory, Austria and Mt. Helmos Observatory, Greece

Since summer 2021, two PINE instruments from KIT are installed at the potential ACTRIS CIS sites Sonnblick Observatory, Austria and Mt. Helmos Observatory, Greece to perform longterm INP measurements in boundary and free-troposphere conditions. These test campaigns will also show the scientific potential to measure INPs at different location at the same time.

 

Publications