NAMBLEX 2002 - Campaign Overview

The Campaign Overview

In the Summer of 2002 more than fifty scientists from ten UK Universities descended upon Mace Head, Connemara, Ireland, equipped with the latest state-of-the-art instrumentation, developed using NERC and JIF funding.

Their mission was to make the most detailed measurements ever of the chemical composition, both in the gas and aerosol phases, of predominantly clean air reaching the site from the Atlantic, in order to test the predictions of models of atmospheric chemistry. The project, funded by NERC and known as NAMBLEX (North Atlantic Marine Boundary Layer Experiment), involved Chemists, Physicists and Meteorologists, and will help us understand better the chemical mechanisms that control the concentrations of greenhouse gases, radiatively-active aerosols and gases responsible for the deterioration of air quality, for example, ozone.

Participating Institutions were the Universities of Leeds, York, East Anglia, Leicester, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, UMIST, Lancaster and Cambridge.

Campaign objectives were:

To test quantitatively our basic understanding of oxidation processes in clean and moderately polluted air using observed correlations and comparisons of measured and model-predicted behaviour.
To study extensively the chemistry of halogen species in the marine boundary layer through observation of reactive intermediates and their sources and sinks.
A study of the reactive nitrogen budget over the Atlantic Ocean.
To examine the origins and role of reactive hydrocarbons in the MBL, and carbon budget reconciliation using comprehensive chromatography.
To investigate the size-distributed composition, internal mixing and Cloud Condensation Nucleus (CCN) activity of aerosols and the processes involved in new particle creation.

Home Contact Disclaimer
Last Modified: